Wikivoyage talk:City article status Voyage Tips and guide

This article was the Collaboration of the month for January 2019.

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I wonder why we require GetIn section for a district article for being eligible to Usable status? Any objections to removing this requirement for districts? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 20:09, 1 September 2010 (EDT)

I consider "get in" to be the most basic information that any article must have to be "usable," in the literal sense of the word. If travelers do not know how to get to Khao San Road, then the article will not be of much use, regardless of how well the rest of the article is developed. The get in section is sometimes less important for the central-most district article, but even there it is very useful to provide some basic transport info. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:19, 2 September 2010 (EDT)

I'm fine with requiring it for guide status, but why for usable--which says "An adventurous person could use this article" in the first place? From inside the city, it's very frequently "districtname is fairly easy to get to from anywhere in the city by taxi, bus, and metro"; from airport / out-of-city train stations / ports, having GetIn directions in the city article do the job for 90% cases.

I try to apply the requirement to districts in Budapest, Barcelona, Moscow and St Petersburg (escpecially to the central ones most interesting to--and most frequenly used by travelers), and every time it looks very odd to me for usable district status. And for outer districts, there's always some kind of directions for a hotel / attraction--which again do the job much better for 90% of that other 10% of needs. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 18:34, 2 September 2010 (EDT)

Plunged forward: [1]. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 18:32, 28 January 2011 (EST)

Wait, I still disagree for the reasons above. It's not hard to say, use Metro stop X, or Bus #Y to get into this district, and that really is fundamental information. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 18:58, 30 January 2011 (EST)

I didn't find it stated that explicitly--should templates like usablecity, guidecity, starcity be also used for district articles? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:45, 2 September 2010 (EDT)

Currently, one of the requirements for usable status is: At least the most prominent attraction is identified with directions.

As some may know, a British postcode identifies a building's location quite precisely in urban areas and is able to be used by most mapping programs intended for use in the British Isles. Are just an address and postcode, as in this example sufficient information in a Listing or do we need to add "first right, second left, drive 2.6 miles and turn left" type directions to qualify it for usable status? --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 10:20, 20 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

For Western destinations at least, I think the directions parameter is more useful for public transport directions. Addresses can simply be keyed into Google Maps or found on a streetmap. See the See section of Melbourne/City Centre for my interpretation. James A ▪ talk 10:41, 20 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

That makes sense, James. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 11:50, 20 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Very few of our articles are at Stub status. Very many are tagged as Outline when they only have a single sentence describing where the city or district is located followed by a boney and tantalising skeleton of empty templated sub-headings. Is there a case for raising the bar for achieving Outline status? I would favour our city template automatically placing a Stub status template rather than an Outline status template (after changing the Stub and Outline maturity qualification wording, of course). --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 10:20, 20 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

The stub status should be reserved for articles were there is no structure. Either someone has typed in information with no identifiable sections titles or it is unclear initially if it a location , travel topic or itinerary and needs some work to format to an outline article. If a page just has outline titles with no content, like Prq, then it should be redirected or tagged for deletion. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:32, 20 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

In the description of Guide status:

There will be multiple ways to get in, some suggestions for moving out, and information on getting around.

I don't think this site means to tell people how to move out of a city. I don't know what "move out" means in other dialects of English, but here in the US, it means what people in Britain and some other countries call "moving house." I don't like the use of the future tense in that sentence, either.

I propose the following change in language:

There are clear explanations of multiple ways to get in, information on getting around, and suggestions for where to go next with one-liner descriptions.

Also, why is there no requirement for Guide status articles to have any photos in them? I think that's wrong. I think that they should be required to have a custom pagebanner and at least one additional photo, at a bare minimum. What do you think? Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:29, 5 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

I support your proposed wording change with regard to "moving out".

As for requiring photos for guide cities, adding that requirement would force us to instantly demote a significant number of current guide cities. If someone were to go through all the current guide cities first and make sure they all get a banner and at least one other photos, I would probably support such a requirement change afterward. Texugo (talk) 11:44, 5 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

That makes sense. Where do we try to publicize such efforts? Should we do a Guide Article Expedition? Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:51, 5 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

I doubt there are so many that it needs an expedition. There may be a handful which have a banner but not a second picture, but ignoring those for the moment, it appears that there are currently 97 guide cities with no banner. (List here.) I imagine that goal is short term enough that we don't need to mount a full-blown expedition. Texugo (talk) 12:04, 5 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps this should be publicized in the Pub, then. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:10, 5 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Yes, and perhaps you could make it a sub-goal of Wikivoyage:Banner Expedition. Texugo (talk) 13:13, 5 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

I went ahead and changed the language about the criteria for Guide status. I should probably look to see what the Guide requirements are for other types of articles, as they may also need better phrasing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:45, 6 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

I do see a similar problem in the phrasing of the criteria for Region Guide-status articles. However, my hard drive may fail at any moment (I will send the computer in for replacement of the hard drive very soon). So I think I'll come back to this later. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:48, 6 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

I also changed the language for Region Guide-status articles and Park Guide-status articles, but I'm not sure what to do about similar language for Wikivoyage:Country guide status, because "Go next" sections are not standard for that type of article, but the problematic "moving out" language is there. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:33, 6 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Districts are notably different and have notably different requirements. I think our status-definitions should reflect that. Currently, the page Wikivoyage:Article status says that this very page also applies for districts... I'd be in favor of a new page Wikivoyage:District guide status Hobbitschuster (talk) 11:48, 25 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

What language would you change for a "District guide status" article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:53, 25 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Well for starters the "get around" section is not part of our district article template, so it should not be required for them to become guide. Otherwise the template is nonsensical Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:05, 25 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

The requirements merely state that there is information on how to get around within the article, and (for Stars) that the map is useful for showing same. We've never had a problem with promoting a district to Star under these guidelines. I think the differences are too small to be worth setting up a new set of status guidelines and templates. Really, all a District is is a 'city' that's part of a bigger city. Powers ^(talk) 23:34, 25 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Why isn't "Get around" part of the district article template? It seems like it should be. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:40, 26 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

What do you think of the proposal as outlined below? What should be added? what should be axed? I think one of the reasons why districts were supposed to not need a "get around" section is that the city article already spells it out mostly (e.g. "except for downtown Atlanta is only really accessible by car", or "Berlin is accessible by subway (U-Bahn) regional heavy rail (S-Bahn) and the eastern and increasingly western parts are accessible by streetcar / tram ("Straßenbahn"), if you don't like horrible traffic, leave your car out of town" or something to that effect). This is of course not always the case, but sometimes duplicating content is not the smartest move... Hobbitschuster (talk) 11:22, 26 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Yes, the theory is that districts are small enough that there's nothing useful to say about how to get around. It's either "walk" or the information is already in the city article. Powers ^(talk) 23:46, 26 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

That's not always the case, but it's fine for "Get around" to be optional in district articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:41, 27 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

(the language can obviously be improved upon, I will for now concentrate on usable and guide, as they appear to me to be the most relevant)

Usable: The article has information where the district is (roughly) situated. It has at least one eat and sleep listing with contact information or if there are no such places in this district provides information about the closest district that does. It furthermore mentions at least one attraction to see or do

Guide: Gives a good overview of the culture and "feel" of the district with information about cuisine, accommodation and people if and where applicable. The list of attractions is well fleshed out and entice a voyager to go there. If getting around the district is not self-evident, it becomes easy after reading this guide and the location of the district and its mode of entry are clearly established.

Please note that this a first rough draft only and - as a trait that is common in my mother tongue - is probably too verbose for its own good. Please give me your feedback. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:41, 25 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

--

I appreciate the effort but frankly, I don't see what (in practice) the huge difference is with the current set of requirements. All our sets are written in more or less the same style, I suggest we keep this one in line. If you want to have a separate set of requirements for districts instead of using the city guide set, I have no objections. But why change the whole wording? Just delete the bits that don't apply, and add a few words that would. JuliasTravels (talk) 19:27, 28 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

I agree with Julia on this. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:29, 29 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Okay, than please try to reformulate it with our standard standard criteria in mind. I just don't think a "one size fits all" approach that treats districts the same as cities does indeed do any good. Hobbitschuster (talk) 10:00, 29 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Well, for me it's not such a bad fit, so you'll have to indicate which parts you think are such a bad match. On first glance, only the reference about districts needs to go? So:

Guide : Has different choices for accommodation and eating/drinking, and information on multiple attractions and things to do. Listings and layout closely match the manual of style. There are clear explanations of multiple ways to get in, clear information on getting around, and suggestions for where to go next, with one-liner descriptions.

Star: Has a tourist-style map, in Wikivoyage style with modifiable vector source, showing how to get around the destination, with major attractions, restaurants, etc. that match the listings in the guide. Layout and listing formats either match the manual of style exactly or are the exception that proves the rule. Any sub-articles are at least "guide" status. Prose is not only near-perfect grammatically but also tight, effective, and enjoyable. At least one good-quality photo accompanies the article; preferably 2-3 showing famous or important attractions. JuliasTravels (talk) 15:28, 29 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

If "get in" and "get around" are both optional for our district article skeletons, than I do not think we need to mention them specifically in the criteria for guide usable and star. However, for bigger districts or districts of cities with non self-evident transportation, these sections might be needed, thus further complicating manners. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:46, 29 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

"Get in" is always required in every destination article. It's one of five required sections. Anyway, I think you're viewing these guidelines too strictly. We've never had a problem applying them properly to district articles. Powers ^(talk) 19:25, 29 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Swept in from the pub

As may by now be known among some here, I recently upgraded the status of a whole bunch of district articles who were erroneously classified as outline. While probably some of those currently classified as usable are (or should be) in fact guides, the most pressing issue appears to have been resolved there. However, what about the tons of city articles? Some I assume might even end up on the vfd trash heap, while others should maybe be deleted simply for being verbatim copies of that other site. Regardless, there is currently a large number of city articles at outline and unlike country articles, it is rather easy to asses whether they merit a promotion to usable. However, this is a daunting task for the thousands of outline city articles currently in existence. I would be willing to do part of the work, but not all of it. Who would be willing to help?

To clarify: Initially there will be no (major) effort to work on the content of the articles per se just to more accurately assess them in order to make those articles that are truly problematic more evident and hence subsequent work easier.

Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:37, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Support. We sure do have a lot of outline city article that has the four things required for usable status. I run into them all the time (and correct them), for each article it takes perhaps three seconds. The problem is, as you said, that there are thousands and thousands of articles. ϒpsilon (talk) 18:10, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Precisely. How many people do you think would be necessary for this to be worthwhile? Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:22, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

5-10? The more, the better of course. ϒpsilon (talk) 18:32, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

If an expedition is formed to methodically go through and update article statuses then I have no objection. However, I'm concerned about the statement that "Some I assume might even end up on the vfd trash heap, while others should maybe be deleted simply for being verbatim copies of that other site". See WV:Deletion policy for guidelines on when a deletion is appropriate - if a goal of this expedition is to delete articles, particularly if the articles wouldn't normally merit deletion under existing guidelines, that would be less straightforward and I think some specific proposals about what is going to happen would be useful before any expedition started making changes. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:13, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Any way to have a script find everything with (1) "See" or "Do" non-blank and (2) "Eat" non-blank and (3) "Sleep" non-blank and (4) article status "outlinecity" or "outlinepark"? It would cut down the number of articles which need to be checked manually by excluding ones which actually are empty, useless skeletons. It's possible that a page which has been a victim of a CVB attack could have plenty of text, but still not be useful as it's promotional copypasta and not formatted to Wikivoyage style. K7L (talk) 19:16, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

My previous contribution seems to have been "swallowed" by a crashing browser / OS... any way... Here goes: Deletion or vfds are not the stated goal, but rather an undeniable and inevitable side-effect of looking through a large number of articles. Just like my looking through "districts" at outline status turned up some that were in fact not districts at all. If for example we find an article on a two house hamlet in the middle of nowhere with only one tout ever adding context to it and that back at the old place, I guess a deletion might have merit... Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:22, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

As for a skeleton detecting bot... This might on the one hand be helpful in finding more pages that actually don't deserve their outline status. On the other hand some of the empty skeletons are doing no good for this page anyway. In some cases they might even be worse than a redlink. In other cases there may be better ways in which those places could be (or already are) handled. But his is a question for another time, maybe... Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:30, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

It's already settled consensus that we don't delete articles that fall within the parameters of policy just because they happen to be skeletons.

There was a single instance, a year or two ago when we were far deeper in the SEO hole than we are now, when we had a mass deletion of skeleton articles because at that time we were under the impression that we were legally required, per details of our legal settlement with IB, to include a hyperlink to WT in the attribution footer of each article. However: 1) we've since removed these footers from all our articles, thus neutralizing much of the SEO benefit of further deletions; 2) a significant portion of our community (self included) was opposed to the deletion, and, most importantly, 3) all deleted articles were (or were supposed to have been) recreated after deletion, which in my estimation is the final answer to the question of whether simply being a skeleton is a VfD-able offense for an article.

I'm not opposed to this expedition in principle (though I might note that in Wikivoyage these days, creating an Expedition around an idea seems to be one of the surest ways to make people lose interest in it). However, the thing to do with skeleton articles is for chrissakes just add a listing or two to "Buy", "See", "Eat", "Drink" or "Sleep". Aside from the obvious fact that adding more content is always beneficial to the end user of our site, it takes a minimal amount of time, and the shorter an article is the less effort is required to diverge it from its WT counterpart for SEO purposes.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:45, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

The problem is that while being an empty skeleton is not a deletable offense per se, it might indicate that the article covers a place with little in the way to make it worth an article. Hence it is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for deletion but a good first hint. If you catch my drift... Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:52, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

An article that is about a place that isn't article-worthy should be redirected, not deleted - see Wikivoyage:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting. If a goal of this expedition is to identify articles that should be merged or redirected elsewhere that's fine, but if the goal is to generate VFD nominations for articles that wouldn't normally get deleted then I think there will be a lot of pushback. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:09, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

So basically any article can be redirected without any sort of process beforehand? After all merge (even if there is nothing to merge) and redirect is a common outcome of the vfd process... Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:12, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Except in obvious cases it's usually polite to start a talk page discussion prior to redirecting (see Wikivoyage:How to merge two pages#Discuss for a related topic). Most "merge and redirect" VFD results occur when the nominator failed to read WV:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting ("if it is a real place, redirect rather than delete"). -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:03, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

It looks like there are two different questions here, (1) how to find articles marked "outlinecity" which meet the basic criteria (something to see or do, somewhere to eat, somewhere to sleep) for possible promotion to "usable" status vs. (2) how to find skeletons of an "'''X''' is in [[Y]] {{subst:smallcity}}" level of uselessness for merging to valid destinations or nomination for deletion. These are two entirely separate questions. The suggestion that a script could find and list (but not automatically promote) pages where the sections are filled out but the status is still "outline" was intended to address (1). K7L (talk) 20:23, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

It may be a good solution for issue (1), but I don't know whether a bot does in fact justify the effort needed for its creation... Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:31, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

You do realise that we currently have 13714 outlinecities? K7L (talk) 21:06, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Well I have not the slightest idea how much effort such a bot would take to write. Did I mention on occasion that I am not that good with computers? Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:09, 3 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

There are actually less than 2000 articles that have the correct listing that could be moved from outline to usable, but enough for a little project click here then press Do It at the bottom of the page. --Traveler100 (talk) 03:25, 4 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Interesting. If the criteria are "something to see or do, somewhere to eat and somewhere to sleep" that would be this (2250 towns and cities) and this (26 parks). It might be possible to narrow this a bit by excluding pages with {{cleanup}}, {{vfd}} or other issues from the list of promotion candidates. It looks like some of what this finds is promotable, some is badly formatted (listings in wrong sections, touting, other issues which need fixing first) and some pages were demoted or held back due to issues which had since been fixed. K7L (talk) 04:10, 4 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Note that the article also needs to have some information on getting in to be usable. ϒpsilon (talk) 04:38, 4 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

True, and if you want to do a proper job I suggest doing this: User:Traveler100/outlinetousable#What this involves. --Traveler100 (talk) 04:46, 4 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

While efforts to improve our many outline articles are great, I think we should not start focussing on articles that just meet the technical criteria and promoting them to usable. While we might call an article usable with 3 or 4 listings and a mention of the main road, almost all readers will find it completely lacking and will go to another site with more information. In the end, it's all about content and cleanup, because the status change itself has no real effect on readers. I'd suggest determining a workable sub-group, say the 500 best developed outlines. When singling out the best and easiest outline articles to improve (so not half-empty), including a minimum article size in the search might be helpful. Having a banner also helps a lot for the "look" of the article. Perhaps this effort can join forces with some of our banner creators? Lastly, expeditions are rarely successful for this kind of thing, especially when the task is so huge. This might perhaps be a better candidate for a collaboration of the month, if we can narrow the number far down? JuliasTravels (talk) 09:31, 4 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

While those are good ideas User:JuliasTravels, I would like to explicitly focus on the more mundane task of getting stuff into the right category. The bar for "usable" is low by design so that it does not take all that much effort to get an article up to said status. We are not trying to promote anything to guide here. This might be the next step, but I think this is rather done on a country by country or region by region basis as it requires some actual real knowledge of the places rather than technical knowledge of how listings should look like and what information is needed for getting in eating and sleeping. As I have seen with our district articles, approximately half of our current outlines need not be outlines if we apply our own criteria. This is both frustrating for our editing purposes and hindering for people wishing to do upkeep and maintenance tasks. If there is an article tagged as a stub, I know immediately that it has big problems. Outlines may range in quality widely. The end goal should be a list of outline articles that are unusable by any definition of the term and on which further efforts of any kind can more efficiently be focused. Maybe through an "adopt a outline" program or simply through upgrading the "Random Article" tool to filter by status, so that you can find a random outline. If you want, you can of course first look through our usable cities and see whether some of those deserve demotion. Right now this would be a task doable by one or two people with time on their hand. Once we sifted through all outline cities, this will be much harder. Hobbitschuster (talk) 10:56, 4 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

There are obviously no objections to systematically reviewing and updating the status of outlines within policy. While your suggestion would put articles in the "right" status-category, I'm just not entirely sure how it helps maintenance, or why outline articles with usable content are a hindrance. Anyway, it's perfectly fine to sift through them. If you're looking to get people involved in a time-consuming project however, it helps if there's a clear vision of the actual benefit for the site, for readers or SEO. I'm just worried that AndreCarrotflower is right in his somewhat pessimistic view of expeditions, hence my suggestion to come up with clear and feasible boundaries. It was just a suggestion though :) JuliasTravels (talk) 13:52, 4 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

If before upgrading from outline to usable the listings were checked and enhanced I believe that would be beneficial. Removing old listings, fixing bad links and adding addresses and coordinates would not just benefit the reader but also improve the search engine ranking of the page. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:16, 4 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I think the janitorial work that promoting the articles mostly boils down to is extremely important as it allows to more accurately assess the quality (and quantity) of our coverage and where we are lacking. Right now the status designation "outline" means "nobody bothered to upgrade yet" more often than not. And checking the listings (besides things that a bot could do) would be rather hard to do in cases of listings without websites. Of course touting may be discovered as a (positive) side effect as well.... Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:15, 5 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

When I upgrade from outline to usable I will click on all the links to check they are still active and correct where necessary. For the other listings a quick check on google maps generally shows the attraction/hotel/restaurant and will be labelled as "closed" (as apposed to "closed today") if no longer exists. Then maybe quick search on Yahoo if not found by Google. As a final check if that is inconclusive I go to Yelp and TripAdvisor and if I find the reviews are older than 3 or 4 years with nothing newer I assume closed and remove the listing. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:34, 5 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

The usual signs of a "closed" business: main website dead or cybersquatted, a once-active timeline on Facebook/Twitter and the like has no new updates for years, a web search for "(company name) closed" finds local news of a bankruptcy or the business marked closed on some other site (like Yelp), a telephone call gets a recorded intercept error or somebody's private residence (a one-minute test call on VoIP is a penny or two to most developed nations). Usually a venue won't go out of its way to announce its closure (unlike the hype when it opened) but anything that has to be renewed monthly or annually (such as phones, web domains or paid directory adverts) quietly stops getting renewed. Some other company might pop up at the same physical address, but that's hard to spot as one doesn't always know who had that place first. K7L (talk) 15:23, 11 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Will there be any type of collaboration and what will it look like? Maybe we can make it the cooperation of the month September as I gather more people will have time by than... Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:11, 11 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

The main goal is to do this for appropriate articles, right? Looking at the lists above, and considering how many (tens of thousands) of pages I've rated at the English Wikipedia over the years, I have these suggestions:

• "Just do it" for the list of 46 parks. It's a short list, and one person could easily do it. Even if you spent a significant amount of time checking every link, etc., it's probably less than one full day's work for an experienced contributor.
• The list of 2250 cities should probably be processed twice:
  • The first step is little more than a cursory glance, for the purpose changing the "obviously wrong" labels. That will probably require about 40 hours of work. In terms of collaboration, if we could get four people to work on it, then we can have one start at "A" and work down, one start at "M" and work up, the third start at "M" and work down, and the last start at "Z" and work up. Stop when you seem to have encountered pages that the next person checked.
    This is a pretty quick, high-reward process. It should take about one minute per page: Open page, check four sections, see if it obviously meets or exceeds the bare minimum, and change the tag. Move on to the next one. It's a bit repetitive but it's not hard. However, that quick, easy look is the most important step in terms of getting things rated correctly overall. You'll get more value out of fixing ratings on the obvious cases than in waffling (or arguing) over how to classify the borderline cases.
  • Weeding out the "obviously wrong" classifications will reduce the workload for people who are willing to be more thorough. They'll benefit from having a list that is more focused on the ones that require attention. This should be done after the first, quick pass has completed.

Also, in response to a comment above: correct ratings encourage contributors. I've done a lot of article assessment work, and when things are assessed lower than the author expected, then they often feel discouraged. For some contributors, a "good" rating is taken as a sign of appreciation and approval. It's worth spending a little bit of time on this, even if it weren't seen by non-editing readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 17 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

I like your idea, and as a matter of fact at first my intention was nothing but the "first round". Which as you rightly point out, should be a cooperative effort for the city category at least Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:50, 17 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

I'm doing the handful of cities that are outside of the "A to Z" list. Široki Brijeg looks borderline to me (lots of places, but almost no addresses or other contact information), but the others look like they can all be promoted to usable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:52, 17 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Quy_Nhon looks like a well researched article, but it is completely lacking geo-locations.

Is there any guidance to this? Are geo-locations important factors in determining an article's usability or are they completely optional? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:55, 2 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't suggest requiring Geo for Usable status, but where street addresses themselves aren't sufficient, we could require them for Guide status. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:57, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Yes, but Quy_Nhon is nominated for Star. Are coordinates completely optional in this case? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:37, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure. Are they all clearly indicated on the static map? If so, I'd consider that sufficient. However, a point of view was expressed that the map is not too usable, so that seems to be a disputed issue. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:16, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

As there were no dynamic maps back when the status criteria were created, it's no surprise coordinates aren't mentioned at the status page. I think it would make sense to require (new) guide articles to have coordinates; personally I never upgrade articles I'm "responsible" for to guide status before I've added them. That said, I would also not be a huge fan of a campaign to demote guide articles to usable if the only problem is that they lack coordinates... ϒpsilon (talk) 08:49, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Yes tricky. To be clear I'm not actually advocating having coordinates included for article quality grading, just wondering if they were a consideration at all? I guess not. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 09:28, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

As of now coordinates aren't required for guide status and I'm also fine with that. ϒpsilon (talk) 09:55, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

I agree. Sounds reasonable. I would consider coordinates as "nice to have" as well. -- DerFussi 10:18, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Swept in from the pub

Here's something to do if you're bored/looking at random Wikivoyage articles. If you're looking at a city article that is tagged outline, check if there's information for how to get there, at least one attraction, one place to eat and one place to sleep, each with directions/contact information. If the article has all these, tag it as usable.

Unlike other statuses and articles where you have to read the article more carefully, this takes only a few seconds. About half (13,633) of all the articles we have (27,340) are outline cities, and I stumble upon outlines that can be upgraded to usable almost every day, so it means there's a lot of them left and you can help out. ϒpsilon (talk) 08:26, 17 June 2016 (UTC)Reply

Wikivoyage:City guide status is your reference for city articles. What ϒpsilon says is accurate, but I would also say that the requirements for Usable status include the requirements for Outline status, so it should also have an introductory paragraph (or at least sentence) and a standard city article template (basically as shown at Wikivoyage:Quick small city article template or other quick city article templates, or at the very least one with at least Get in, Get around, See, Eat and Sleep sections). Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:46, 17 June 2016 (UTC)Reply

Just check the listing are still valid first though, some places could have closed since the article was created. And if you want to add a little more quality to the article take a look at these suggestions and go to the next level. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:29, 17 June 2016 (UTC)Reply

Some time ago I did that for (at the time) all outline districts... I also tried it for outline airports, but they are a somewhat tougher nut due in part to WV:sleepthere and the decision not to list hotels outside airport grounds... Generally reducing the number of outline articles is a very worthwhile and good idea and perhaps the single most efficient way to improve google ranks readership and writership... Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:28, 17 June 2016 (UTC)Reply

As a suggestion, pick a region. Here is an example how to get a list: outline that could be usable by region. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:34, 25 June 2016 (UTC)Reply

Should the City guide status standards be updated in regards to geo-coordinate and map requirments?

Currently geo-coordinates are only mentioned for "Usable" articles ("If possible, listings have geo-coordinates."), but then nothing is mentioned about them for "Guide" or "Star" articles. Geo-coordinates are so easily found and entered, that it seems strange that this is not a requirement for Guide and Star articles.

So should something like this be used instead?
Usable: at least 25% of listings have geo-coordinates
Guide:  at least 50% of listings have geo-coordinates
Star:     at least 75% of listings have geo-coordinates

The current standard allows a "Guide" status article like Nantucket to have only two geo-coordinates, and a "Usable" status article like Peoria to display nearly all listings with geo-coordinates.

Going hand-in-hand with this is that currently the map requirement for "Guide" status is optional, and only a tourist-style map is required for "Star" articles. Should this be changed to match the proposal above so that Usable and Guide articles are required to have basic maps that show the listings with geo-coordinates?

Again, the ease of installing a map on the page seems too simple to not implement such a requirement. The Nantucket article also serves as an example of a "Guide" status article without a map.

I'm new here, so maybe I missed a previous discussion of this topic, but I didn't see anything in the previous topics above. Having some additional criteria would also make it easier to determine what category an article fits into after changes are made. I understand the status requirements are probably purposely broad/subjective, but including some quantitative requirements would seem to be a great additional guideline for determining the correct city guide status of an article.

Zcarstvnz (talk) 14:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

Usable is well defined (minimum one way for getting in, one each of See, Eat and Sleep) and Star needs to go through a nomination, but Guide indeed is quite badly defined and it has been discussed without much outcome. I think all or almost all listings should have geocoordinates for the article to get guide status. Not sure what to do with "old" articles that have been promoted to guide before dynamic maps and geocoordinates were introduced and that may not have even one listing with coords.

As a side note: I've been active on Destination of the Month candidates where articles need to hold guide status to be eligible, so I wrote for myself some rather strict guidelines for when an article can be called a guide. ϒpsilon (talk) 18:40, 4 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

I agree that Usable is well defined. I think it would be a good idea to require that Guide articles have a good map (including geocoordinates for all or almost all of the listings if it's a dynamic map). —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:12, 4 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

Geocordinates should be a prerequisite and being up to date should be a criterion to maintain guide status. Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:22, 4 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

I am in favour of this being properly defined in policy, and think that a city / district article should have a majority of its listings with geo-co-ordinates in order to reach 'guide' status. I would be reluctant to assign an exact percentage, but the majority should be clear enough to the editor's eye. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:58, 6 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

This is defined in an oblique and indirect manner, "clear information on getting around (preferably including a map)" doesn't explicitly require co-ordinates on the listings, but implicitly the only ways to get a map with POI markers are to provide co-ordinates for a dynamic map or manually, painstakingly create a static map. Maybe this should be clarified to "including a map with point-of-interest markers"? K7L (talk) 03:07, 7 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

The coordinates on listings standard should be applied to guide status articles, but quite a task to add it to all. See Category:See listing with no coordinates, some clean up task there! Is proposal to be all or just key POIs or majority of listings? Should those that need no coordinates be identified in some way so not constantly rechecked? --Traveler100 (talk) 10:07, 9 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

The proposals seem to vary in strictness between 50% of listings needing coordinates and 100% of them needing coords. I'd personally think somewhere in between to be preferable, though closer to 100%.

Forgive me if this is obvious, but what kind of POI doesn't need a geocoordinate? The only listing type that springs to mind is taxi firms, where the registered address doesn't need to be marked on the map.

BTW, I think ϒpsilon's criteria are a good benchmark; the only thing I disagree with is a requisite number of listings. It's perfectly possible to write a guide article about a small town without that number of facilities. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:24, 16 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

"For large cities the minimum requirements..." "Smaller cities (articles using the small city template) have somewhat easier criteria. Most notably they don't need to have as many listings, and the Understand section doesn't need to be as extensive."

Small places almost never have this many POIs, and we can of course not start inventing attractions, restaurants etc. to get up to a certain number. --ϒpsilon (talk) 18:37, 16 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Places not requiring coordinates - maybe the tiny portion of the Appalachian Trail in a given town? Though that could be given starting and ending coordinates within the town. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:46, 16 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I like the idea of most listings having co-ordinates, but I would not insist on all or a percentage doing so. There can be see and do listings for wildlife that is hard to give an exact location. "Robins can be seen nesting in trees in the village." Similarly there can be eat listings for food that is foraged, where it is probably best to only give general directions, rather than directing the crowds to one rock to find shellfish. AlasdairW (talk) 20:55, 16 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Those kinds of things should be mentioned but should not get listing templates. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:55, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Ideally every See, Eat, Buy and Sleep listing should have coordinates. These should be definable locations, if not then the entry should be general text or a different type listing. With Do listings it may or may not make sense. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:23, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for everyone's answers, especially ϒpsilon for pointing out the obvious - I'm not sure how I missed that.

As far as whether the majority of POIs should have geo-coordinates, it looks we're reaching a consensus. To Traveler100's list, I would add drink listings. Most listings other than some 'Do' listings, where the activity could be more spread out, should have POI markers, and those that for whatever reason can't are better written in prose at the start of the relevant section. Is that an accurate summing up of the views now? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:01, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Time to work on text addtion? Please edit below, or support/reject --Traveler100 (talk) 17:22, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Where applicable, all See, Buy, Eat, Drink and Sleep listings should have geo-coordinates.

• Support - --Traveler100 (talk) 17:23, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply
• Support, with additional text: "Information on these topics that you can't provide geo-coordinates for should be provided in prose at the start of the relevant section rather than in listings; for instance general information about characteristic architecture or local food delicacies. Most Do listings should also have coordinates, though this is sometimes not practical such as in the case of activities which can take place anywhere, or when listing hiking trails, mountain bike routes and the like." - the wording could be better. Maybe people could add 'support' to Traveler's original wording above this comment, and feedback for my additions below this comment, just to keep everyone's opinions clear. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:37, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply
  • Question - I particularly support ThunderingTyphoons!' language, but I hope you really mean "should" and not "must", because then Manhattan/East Village would cease to be a Guide article each time I add a new listing without including coordinates, although it has a street address, phone number, usually a URL and opening hours. So I agree with "should", but I don't agree if you mean that every time someone adds a listing without such coordinates, the article's status is to be immediately demoted. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:51, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply
  • (edit conflict) I'm not sure all of these listings should have coordinates. What about a local chain restaurant with branches throughout the city? Or something like Albuquerque Biological Park, which has no coordinates in its main listing but instead just has coordinates in the three listings that are part of it? —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:51, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply
    • For a chain restaurant that is in multiple places in a city then I think that should be changed to prose at the start of the eat (or eat budget) sections; or if showing location of branches treat as the second case. The second example of an attraction with multiple destinations is something I have been pondering, maybe the first entry should be change from type See to an "other" listing. Will make no difference to the display and reading but allows autochecks to work. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:45, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure I like the idea of changing "see" listings into "other" listings just for the sake of making the proposed policy work. I'm also not sure it makes sense to put a restaurant chain in prose instead of as a listing—one nice thing about listings is that they make it easy to organize and format things like phone number, website, price, etc. But anyway, those were just two examples—I don't think they're the only situations in which it makes sense to have a listing with no coordinates. Another example is Black Rock City, where I believe the exact locations of the POIs change every year. Or food trucks, which obviously change locations frequently. I agree with the spirit behind this proposal, but I would be more comfortable if we add something like "where applicable" or "where possible" or change "all" to "most". —Granger (talk · contribs) 07:56, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I agree with you. Logical consistency is good; rigidity is bad. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:02, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

updated proposed text --Traveler100 (talk) 08:25, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

The new version with "where applicable" looks good to me. —Granger (talk · contribs) 11:18, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I approve of the new language, but again, only if "should" really means "should", and not that new listings without Geo automatically result in a downgrade of an article. When I add listings, I think it's OK for someone else to follow up with the Geo. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:59, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I don't think anything happens "automatically" (i.e. quickly) here :P That said, I do think it's good practice to make sure geo-coordinates are added to new listings as quickly as possible, and as standard. Apart from for the exceptions discussed above, I can't see any reason why seasoned contributors should neglect the fact that most listings need POI markers. Unless you have someone who habitually follows your edits, why wouldn't you just fill the lat and long fields yourself, immediately or within a few days? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:40, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I honestly find it a hassle and a boring task. In New York, street addresses are more than sufficient for finding places. So with all​ the other ​stuff I do, I leave most though not all of the Geo to other people. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:22, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I would prefer "most See, Buy, Eat, Drink and Sleep listings". If listings are very close together, it is sometimes better to just say so in directions, rather than putting in lat/longs which only differ in the fourth decimal place and result in an orange cross on the map. For instance two different museums (with different content, opening hours and prices) might be in the same building, or two restaurants may be next door. AlasdairW (talk) 22:11, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

On the tracking side, so we do not have to keep rechecking listings without coordinates, it is possible to add to the lat and long parameter NA for not applicable. It will then not be counted as missing in statistics and check routines. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:35, 20 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

• Question – If a guide or star article has a static map with venues marked (as was common for destinations featured pre-2013) is it still required to have (lat, long) co-ordinates for most/all POI's? K7L (talk) 23:45, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Sorry to answer your question with another question, but wouldn't that depend whether the static map is up-to-date? If it's a pre-2013 map, there could be lots of errors all over the shop. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 00:17, 19 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I have avoided adding lat/longs on articles with static maps to avoid confusing the reader. I want to avoid the map saying "1) Castle 2) Museum 3) Church" and the text saying "1) Museum 2) Gardens 3) Castle". However I think that this problem can be avoided with extra care, and maybe things wouldn't be confusing if there was both a static and a dynamic map, perhaps with text explaining that the static map markers are different. AlasdairW (talk) 20:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

So, for flexibility, perhaps the wording that a guide article should have a map should be changed to "should have a map with point-of-interest markers" to leave open the question of whether the POI's are generated by (lat,long) co-ords or are hard-coded into a static map. K7L (talk) 18:57, 24 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Do not want to see this go the way other proposals have with being talked out with no conclusion. I see supports, a few questions and concerns that have been answered and no outright oppose. Do we make the change? --Traveler100 (talk) 11:28, 24 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Yeeessss. ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:01, 24 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

What change exactly? I'd like to see exactly what language will be used before I vote on this. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:37, 24 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

#Proposed additional text --Traveler100 (talk) 20:41, 24 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

No, I don't support this exact phrasing. Instead, I support K7L's tweak: "So, for flexibility, perhaps the wording that a guide article should have a map should be changed to 'should have a map with point-of-interest markers' to leave open the question of whether the POI's are generated by (lat,long) co-ords or are hard-coded into a static map." I also still wonder if a Guide article is in theory suddenly no longer one whenever a single new listing without Geo is added. I don't disagree with a "should" statement, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:58, 24 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I support the "should have a map with point-of-interest markers" language too. It seems flexible enough to deal with most of the edge cases that have been brought up, though of course we should still use common sense and recognize that there may still be exceptions for a few unusual articles (like Black Rock City). —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:35, 24 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

As of today there are 476 guide and star status city articles with listings without coordinates. I assume we do not want to start a mass down grading of articles and keep these as they are? However should we put a time limit on this? Say one year, if not fixed by then then start to set back to useable? Improving, at least the star status city articles, would be a good cotm. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:33, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

A year would be a reasonable length of time to get things in order. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:40, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Just to show how big a task this is. Hopefully this does not put people off (we have in the past reduced missing images and dead links with similar magnitude of work. Wikivoyage:Dynamic maps Expedition/ListingCoordStats --Traveler100 (talk) 06:38, 20 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

As we are the topic I would also like to propose that guide articles should have a customer page banner. Currently 4 city articles and 8 other guide status article have default banner, so not a big task to complete. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:31, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I agree with this. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:02, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Support. I have just done one so there are only 11 to go. AlasdairW (talk) 12:21, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I am assuming this is a non controversial topic so have take the liberty of adding to the project page. --Traveler100 (talk) 13:00, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

For consistency the custom banner requirement for guides should be added onto every article type, not just cities. Gizza ^(roam) 11:34, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I agree with this. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:56, 18 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

"Guide" is but one article status, and this page covers all of them.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:34, 18 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Yep. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:06, 18 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

That's been hiding in plain sight since 2006. Well spotted. Ground Zero (talk) 10:16, 18 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. But note that we also have Wikivoyage:Region guide status, Wikivoyage:Country guide status, Wikivoyage:Park guide status and Wikivoyage:Airport guide status, so maybe we have been consistent. AlasdairW (talk) 19:43, 18 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Yes. And all should be changed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:21, 18 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Agreed, and I think we have consensus. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 11:23, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Done --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:21, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Here's what I propose for the new informative status:

Has a couple of ways to Get in and multiple Eat and Sleep listing each with contact information (around three or four). Most of the important attractions and activities are identified with directions. If the destination lacks a hotel or restaurant, the article says so and proposes possible alternatives while if the destination only has one or two, it mentions that. If possible, listings have geo-coordinates.

Any objections? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:49, 27 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

I think we need to have a general discussion on these. When adding informative, it makes sense to adjust usable and guide to match, but raising the bar means that many articles now marked as guide will fall down one step. This shouldn't be done unilaterally by a few users. This in turn means that we need to have a well-prepared discussion in the Pub. I remember having done some work on some of the informative article status tables, which one? Have we been working on all of them? –LPfi (talk) 16:03, 4 August 2023 (UTC)Reply