Shortcut: Pub The Travellers' pub is the place to ask questions when you're confused, lost, afraid, tired, annoyed, thoughtful, or helpful. Please check the FAQ and Help page before asking a question though, since that may save your time and others'. Please add new questions at the bottom of the page and sign your post by appending four tildes (~~~~) to it, but otherwise plunge forward! If you have a question or suggestion about a particular article, use the article's talk page to keep the discussion associated with that article. If you are having a problem that you think has to do with the MediaWiki software, please post that on Bugzilla instead. If you want to celebrate a significant contribution to Wikivoyage by yourself or others, hold a party at Celebrate a contribution. Issues related to more than one language version of Wikivoyage are discussed in the Wikivoyage Lounge on Meta. Please sweep the pub Keeping the pub clean is a group effort. If we have too many conversations on this page, it gets too noisy and hard to read. If you see an old conversation (i.e. a month dormant) that could be moved to a talk page, please do so, and add "{{swept}}" there, to note that it has been swept in from the pub. Place it on the talk page roughly in chronological order. A question regarding a destination article should be swept to the article talk page. A discussion regarding a policy or the subject of an expedition can be swept to the policy or expedition talk page. A simple question asked by a user can be swept to that user's talk page, but consider if the documentation needs updating to make it clearer for the next user with the same question. A pointer to a discussion going on elsewhere, such as a notice of a star nomination or a request to comment on another talk page, can be removed when it is old. Any discussion that occurred in the pub can be swept to where the main discussion took place. Any discussions that do not fall into any of these categories, and are not of any special importance for posterity, should be archived to Travellers' pub/Archives and removed from here. If you are not sure where to put a discussion, let it be—better to spend your efforts on those that you do know where to place.

• Many of our articles are missing pictures and pictures are key to a travel resource. There are many pictures on Wikipedia / Commons that could be easily added. I have done a few. Having a list of all articles missing pictures would make adding them easier. Does this exist or could a bot create one?
• If alexa.com is to be trusted 20% of our visitors were just at Wikipedia. It would be useful to make sure that we have a link from each of the corresponding Wikipedia articles to Wikivoyage in the external links section. I know many exist but not sure how consistent this is. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for helping! There is a page called Wikivoyage:Pages needing images, but it lists only some such pages and needs updating. It also is not linked from Category:Articles needing attention, and like an unsigned user who posted to Category talk:Articles needing attention, I have no idea how to insert a link into Category:Articles needing attention. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:56, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

There's also Category:Articles without Wikipedia links, but it is essentially - and seemingly inexplicably - essentially contentless. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:59, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I added a note over there -- since it's a manually generated list, not a category, it can't be added as a subcategory like the others. I also don't know if it's still being updated?

(Add links to categories by prefixing the link with a colon, e.g. [[:Category:Africa]] instead of [[Category:Africa]].) -- D. Guillaume (talk) 20:09, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

To my knowledge, no-one is updating it. Is there a way a bot could update it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:16, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yes a bot that lists all articles without pictures would be perfect. Should be easy to do to. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:08, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

My recent exposure to Tripadvisor brought home how old-fashioned the WV model has become. Tripadvisor isn't optimal (cluttered, not always intuitive, and commercial to its core), but some of its structure and processes could be modified and adopted here without much trouble: I refer specifically to the much more effective invitations to readers to write reviews of hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions. We fail dreadfully on that count. It's all in the linking and the creation of sub-pages. My second observation is that we need a lot more images. I'm almost inclined to run competitions and award prizes as a way of boosting our photographic profile. Is there a WV thematic organisation yet??? Tony (talk) 03:00, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Agree allowing users to provide reviews would be a great way to draw them into contributing. Is discussed here with mockups Wikivoyage:Roadmap/Enable_listings_reviews. We need programmers to help.

Yes a competition for photos is a good idea. IMO every article should have at least one appropriate photo.

There is a Thorg for Wikivoyage here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage_e.V. It was started in 2006 in Germany. Stefan will be speaking with me at Wikimania. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:14, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Our problems with struggling readership begin and end, essentially, with SEO.

Leaving aside the brief blip in activity during the launch week, Wikivoyage has actually been trending sharply downward on Alexa since the launch (it bears mentioning that over the past two weeks there's been a sustained uptick in activity, but as far as I can tell it's too early to say whether that's anything more than a statistical anomaly). Meanwhile, in this same time period, Wikipedia has been diligently adding interwiki links on its pages to Wikivoyage. The original commenter's points on continued integration of Wikivoyage with other WMF sites is well taken; however, the trend over the past six months says to me that we can't rely on Wikipedia alone to drive visitors to our site.

Also, while I'll be the first to say that more images are a good thing, I highly doubt that how many images our articles have makes much of a difference in our Alexa rankings. Wikitravel, being essentially a dead site as far as active contributions are concerned, presumably has fewer images than we do. But, far from sinking like a stone, over the past six months Wikitravel's lead over Wikivoyage on Alexa has actually widened. This despite the fact that Wikipedia has been removing links to Wikitravel on its pages as steadily as it's been adding links to us. According to Alexa, fully 19.3% of Wikitravel's viewers were referred there by Google - and that figure takes into account only google.com, not google.de, google.co.uk, and the other international Googles, six more of which besides the main one are on the top 10 list of upstream sites for Wikitravel. Meanwhile, Wikivoyage only gleans 6.1% of its visitors from Google. This says to me that, again, our main problem is with SEO.

Wikivoyage has a Search Expedition. I'm not an active contributor, as I know next to nothing about the technical aspects of SEO, so I can't say for sure how active that expedition is. But if it isn't active, it really, really, really needs to be. In my opinion, we need to put on the back burner things like adding images to articles and cajoling Wikipedia to continue adding interwiki links to us, and go full throttle in solving our Google problem, whether that be by convincing them that we're not just a mirror of Wikitravel, or by twisting the WMF's arm to do what they need to do, or whatever the hold-up happens to be. All other concerns regarding boosting readership are, frankly, secondary. Failing a solution to our Google problem, we are going to end up the dead site, not Wikitravel.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:58, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Our pageviews have increased by more than 10% each month the last 2 months to 8.1M in June 2013 from a low of 6.4M in Apr.http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikivoyage/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthly.htm

We have seen a significant up tick in numbers of articles created over the last few months and some languages have seen a persistent increase in editor number over the old site English French

The number of very active WVers is higher than it ever has been [1]

I think our best hope to have google take notice is to make this site a whole lot better. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:22, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

• I agree with James. And it's not just SEO: a multipronged strategy is needed to improve and update the site, too. Several dimensions can and should be address simultaneously. We should have a solid look at what technical improvements are in order, so we can join the loooong queue to get help from WMF techs. Tony (talk) 06:04, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

James, unless I do not understand something here, it seems that the number of very active editors is actually 50% lower today than it was in January. The uptick in Jan was a one-off issue and we largely lost that momentum, sadly. It is worth discussing how we can engage Wikipedians to cross over and come to edit WV once in a while. Your presentation may be an important step here!

More importantly, I believe Andrew is right here. Our Pageviews keep improving slightly, bo so do Wikitravel's. I believe this is natural seasonality - people on the Northern Hemisphere are increasingly on vacation now and keep frequenting the travel sites for advice. Let us see whether this doesn't wear off in a few months' time, I believe it may, to a large extent. We do need to improve our standing with Google, and one of the best and most proven ways to do that is by improving the amount of links to our pages.

I mentioned above that one of the most proven ways for a Wiki is by having mirrors that dump all or a significant part of the content and act according to our license, i.e. by adding a linkback to every article they maintain a copy or derivative of. This way, we get thousands and thousands of links, and as we do not link back to them, Google recognizes we are the original site for this content. I mentioned that some sites using our content found it confusing how to use our content and automatically update it, but my concerns were largely dismissed as unimportant. This IS important.

We may get slight improvements to our content by dilligently working on it but frankly, being completely CC-licensed, everything we do well can be "borrowed" by WT anytime. What we need here is a gradual jump so that people become accustomed to using and editing WV and forget about WT, and also favor us over other travel sites or even Wikipedia for travel information. Adding cool features (dynamic maps, listings editor etc.) will help keep people stay and coming back, but they first need to discover us to discover those. We also need multifold more editors to really deploy all the features over articles and fill them ALL with first-rate, up-to-date content.

I love being in our own little world and little community where we almost all know each other and do not have to worry about sudden changes, but I'd much rather have to deal with a rapid influx of clueless newcomers that need to be explained the same things over and over again (which is called welcoming newcomers, what most Wikis have processes for, but not us), than argue about whether windmills or castles are the best choice for a banner with the same guys over and over again. There is a certain homeliness to it, and I do enjoy it, but I am really here in hopes WV will strike it big time not be a side project that everybody at WMF would be looking strangely at.

And yes, either the guys at the Search Expedition are covertly working on something MASSIVE, or that Expedition doesn't seem to be going anywhere... I would love to be proven otherwise soon.

Kindest, PrinceGloria (talk) 06:06, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

PS. Actually, I am not a fan of reviews. I love for them all to be on TripAdvisor and I wish for every other competitor to TA to die miserably, as I'd hate for good review content to be spread over many sites and me had to check out more than one site to get a good overview. That said, TA doesn't really have THAT much of an edge in terms of traveller-generated NON-REVIEW CONTENT. People who come there to vent off do not seem to go to edit their content pages (which they have a system for, and pretty much space for much of what we cater for in WV), or join the forums, where there is a small community for every destination, and those communities seem to grow very slowly.

I believe if we started accepting reviews, we would have a slew of low-quality edits written in barely intelligible, poorly spelt English by people venting off. Except for the very leading review sites, most contain very low-quality content, so until we become really popular, I would really not want to become open to reviews. If a person wants to share their experiences, it is best that they edit the article itself, adding useful information, e.g. that the Tikka Massala is really good or that they close at 10 PM, or maybe that it's best to park round the corner or arrive on tram 15.

Might get some good reviews too. What is essentially different about reviewing a restaurant or cafe, and adding to the "main text" of the article? I see opinionated text all over the place anyway. And sequestering reviews in linked-to sub-pages separates them from the more formal presentation, doesn't it? Can I say, I'm travelling soon, and en.WV has nothing, zilch, zero, on one of the towns in Germany I'll be staying in for three nights; de.WP has a useless stub. Tripadvisor has a large amount of information, although I don't like the structuring in some ways. I'll be using tripadvisor. What else? Tony (talk) 12:24, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Comment - As founder of Wikivoyage:Search Expedition, I'll put in my 2c. It was off to quite a good start when we launched back in February with the goal of not only increasing our SEO, but also overall readership and usage. We managed to remove practically every link and template to Wikitravel on all WMF sites, and replace many with our own. We have promoted some collaboration with tourist bureaus and created "As featured on Wikivoyage" badges, but that has some way to go. We have also been monitoring progress of article search rankings and testing ideas such as mass-modification of articles so we don't appear as a duplicate site. However, I feel it is really not getting enough attention. I edit less around here now due to my education, and the expedition really has died off unfortunately. I contacted the WMF back in May urging them to provide Google Webmaster Tools as a priority, and was told it is usually handled by WMF staff, but that they would look into it and would also prod their Google contacts about the duplication issue. I've heard nothing since. I agree with Andrew that the community really needs to take this issue much more seriously, as does the WMF, or things will just go more and more downhill. Even I occasionally doubt the purpose of the contributions we make to Wikivoyage when the dump that is WT continues to grow. I implore people to take an interest in this urgent issue. James A ▪ talk 13:16, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

This is a very important issue, and one which needs to be a much larger priority. I think part of our problem popularity-wise is that lots of people still don't know we exist. I don't think that people necessarily use WT because they have any care for the financial objectives of Internet Brands, but because they don't know that there is a better alternative. In the UK at least, I've not seen any mention of WV in the mainstream media, even around the time of the launch. That would probably be the easiest way to get 'people through the door', though I'm not sure how we'd go about it. The only thing I can think of that might be newsworthy is if we managed to launch some sort of partnership with a tourism board - that might at least hit the local press ("XXX in pioneering partnership with Wikivoyage travel site"), though we'd have to discuss anything like that with the partner in question.

Either way, I think it would be a good idea to have some sort of 'Outreach Programme', spreading the good word beyond our borders. Facebook and Twitter are both good tools but, at least to a degree, exposure to our posts is optional and selected by people who already know the site. We need to tell people who have never heard of us.

In terms of SEO, we continue to return to the unfortunate conclusion that the best way to improve our search rankings is to improve our content. Google's algorithms are specifically designed to prevent 'quick fixes', so we are going to struggle a little. I think an 'Outreach Programme' as described above could be a good start, however. --Nick ^talk 14:32, 25 July 2013 (UTC) (apologies if you've read parts of this before.)Reply

Hi! I noticed this conversation thanks to coverage in the English Wikipedia Signpost. I've now reached out to the heads of Wikimedia Foundation's Analytics and Operations groups to let them know of this request.

Regarding outreach in general: when at conferences, and when talking with friends who are traveling, I often tell people about Wikivoyage, and suggest to people that they check and update Wikivoyage. I think it would be great for Wikivoyage experts to get more Wikivoyage-related curricula and suggestions on http://outreach.wikimedia.org/ , so that people who are already interested in running edit-a-thons and other similar events can help new people learn about and contribute to Wikivoyage. Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 14:22, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Sumana, again, what you did is brilliant and thank you a whole lot for your interest and taking action. As concerns Outreach, can you give us an example of what and how we can contribute? PrinceGloria (talk) 20:57, 27 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

PrinceGloria, You can contribute by writing the success stories here. Your story could be about the little monument you covered for Wikivoyage, an meetup you conducted or anything you feel is an achievement. You can also pitch in to document the best practices in organizing stuff, partnering with institutes or any similar activity here. I am not an expert at Outreach wiki, and I am sure that there are many more possibilities for Wikivoyagers there. --Netha Hussain (talk) 20:08, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, Netha! PrinceGloria, have you taken a look at outreach.wikimedia.org to see how you can use their resources in a Wikivoyage outreach program? Another example: you can turn your "how to get started contributing to Wikivoyage" guide into a leaflet and upload it to the Bookshelf at the outreach wiki. If you want an extra boost, you can then email about it to the outreach Ambassadors (Ambassadors help contributors who are students or instructors at educational institutions) and also tell the wikimedia-l mailing list so the people who run workshops hear about it and can encourage people to improve Wikivoyage.

I also want to point out Wiki Loves Monuments, a Wikimedia photo contest that concentrates on documenting our cultural heritage. It starts on September 1st. People go on photo walks, encourage new contributors, and upload photos to Commons. And then it can be a fun activity to illustrate articles that previously did not have photos with the new photos from the WLM contest. For more information about how to participate, and contact information for the organizers in case your Wikivoyage wants to get involved in some way, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013 . Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 16:33, 22 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Stefan and I are working on a presentation for Wikimania Aug 10th in Hong Kong here [2]. We have 50 minutes to speak about Wikivoyage. Any comments / suggestions? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:12, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps after making your audience all enthusiastic for the project, suggest to edit their home town, add their favourite restaurant. Since on Wikipedia it's quite the other way around (personal involvement often being considered a bad thing), I imagine it might be useful to point out that we in fact like such suggestions. It's a good way to get started, I think. Good luck with the preparations! JuliasTravels (talk) 22:02, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

It's super that you're doing this! I think it would be great to present some of the improvements we've made, such as the changes to the front page, pagebanners, and increased numbers of high-quality images on pages, with "before and after" projections. Please also mention the monthly features and show them examples of Destination of the Month, Off the Beaten Path, and other featured articles. As a side point, many phrasebooks could use more help, and at an international conference in Hong Kong, I'm sure there will be speakers of many languages, so as part of your request, you could also suggest that some members of the audience might enjoy helping improve phrasebooks in languages they speak. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:06, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Might want to mention the ongoing Airport Expedition and the work on the Dynamic maps Expedition and listing editor. I'd also say anything you can do to get people interested in the other language versions would be great. Es:, pt:, and ro: are all really hurting for more collaborators, and other versions may be too. Texugo (talk) 22:13, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks great suggestions. Maybe will also discuss the manual of style. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:05, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

You asked for it and you will get it and you will regret it. I am pretty anal about presentations, plus just woken up by a random call in the middle of the night, so rather p!ssed. But FWIW, here I go:

1. Experience tells me that bullet-point slides are not a good way to capture the audience's attention. Even if you end up conveying so much more than the bullet points say, people will read the bullet points quickly and their attention span will lapse. Any kind of picture or graphic, be it a chart, screenshot, photo, graph, illustration is much more stimulating to the brain and will have the audience wanting to find out its relationship to the slide text.
2. I believe it would be good if the presentation would be useful for those who won't be able to attend the conference for them to download, and as such should be self-contained and self-explanatory in a way. I believe in 50 minutes you will want to say more than what you have on the slides more, so adding a few more words of explanation and details won't hurt.
3. I would consider starting with the bright side - what is Wikivoyage, how it is useful, fun, engaging and worthwhile. The gloomy, murky bits about the history could be left for a later bit - it is important to speak about it, but it would be better not to make the impression that Wikivoyage is only about being in conflict with IB
4. I am not really sure what messages you are trying to convey with all the charts. It would be good to add titles, comments and takeaways, especially for the offline reader
5. Slide 15 sounds like we are all doomed and will die. Besides, was anybody surveyed to say that Wikivoyage is "technically hard to edit" and has "too many rules"? If I am reading it correctly, those seem like personal opinions and should not be presented as facts, but rather hypotheses. There are many other reasons why people might not get to edit WV, and it would be good to list all the hypotheses along with some proof. One of my hypotheses is that there simply aren't enough people aware of and frequently visiting WV to convert into a substantial editor group. A comparison of the number of visitors / page views and editors of popular travel sites (WT, TripAdvisor, WV) would come in handy to test it.
6. If slide 15 is about something totally else, this proves my point about writing (and illustrating) slides in a way that the offline reader gets the message just as well.
7. At any rate - what's with all this stuff about women, Facebook and Pinterest???
8. Slides 18-20 need titles and comments as to what they present
9. Slide 22 (how to find new Contributors) should go after the discussion of how there aren't many now
10. Another way one can start contributing is by looking up the guides for the places they plan to travel to and improve them during their own plans and preparations (this is what I do), as well as after returning. This is when one devoted the most attention to a destination and sees it from the same POV other target readers would.
11. The fun thing about WV is that you can contribute meaningfully even when you have very little time, willingness and attention span. Adding a listing or photo, making a banner or copyediting a section can be very worthwhile. At Wikipedia, real satisfaction mostly comes from writing a long, well-referenced status and pushing it through FA, which often requires weeks of work. Wikivoyage is always "live" and never finished (like a Wikipedia FA article), so one doesn't need to feel bad when their contributions are scattered across what tickled their fancy at a given moment. Dropping to WV for a moment can be a good way to relax from the demanding and rather formalized other projects, like Wikipedia.
12. We absolutely need to mention the Dynamic Maps in a most prominent way, and the future possibilities, such as "Special:Nearby". To me this is so much more important and powerful to reviews, which will be a laughably underutilized feature until we get readership and usership on par with other travel sites. And this may only happen thanks to innovative features such as dynamic maps and real-time geolocalization.
13. If there is any expedition I would mention besides Dynamic Maps, I'd say it's Banners.

I guess that's it in terms of reasonable comments I could make at that time of day (night). Do not hesitate to let me know how I can help you with the presentation. Kindest, PrinceGloria (talk) 00:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC) PrinceGloria (talk) 00:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. Slide 15 is for the Wikipedia crowd generally rather than specifically about Wikivoyage. There is huge talk in the movement as a whole about editor numbers and why they have stop growing. My point is that Wikivoyage does not have huge numbers of rules and is not hard to edit and yet it too stopped growing at about the same time as Wikipedia did.

The female / male ratio is another huge issue.

Do you have some links to more info on the dynamic maps?

Yes agree with leading with images. Many of them have no text. The key point in that WV has had an uptick in activity both in editor numbers and content creation since joining the WM movement. I will write in some notes to go with the slide for those note present. It will be recorded as well. Travel Doc James (talk ·contribs · email) 00:25, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

James, thanks for taking the time to read through my comments and think over some of them. The key point here is that I believe this needs to be a presentation of what WV is, that it is BOTH fun and very useful, in a way very different from WP and other projects. It is just one thing that every Wikipedian, Wiktionarian, Commoner (?) etc. can add to their daily routine and just pop in to add the very smallest detail and it will still add up to a very useful whole. WV is still one of the easiest and most laid-back projects to work on, and with all of that, it has tremendous value for the reader. This, to me, is far important of how it separated from WT, that we are having a logo competition or why women don't edit Mediawikis as much as men do (which I believe is good to leave out for a separate presentation).

If you'd like help with anything, just tell me what it would be and I'd try to find time to help you with a slide, illustration or anything. PrinceGloria (talk) 06:20, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

PS. It is great to know that your presentation will be video'd, but watching a 50-min video is not as fun as listening to you in person. That is why I believe the "written" presentation is so important, as it can probably be consumed in 5-10 minutes and it can really go the distance!

PS2. Wikivoyage:Dynamic maps Expedition

• James et al., I seem to have a radically different take from the rest of the world on the use of slides in presentations. It's born of several observations and home-spun logical inferences:

1. that audiences—whether undergraduates, professionals, or the public—tire quickly of continuous slides;
2. that slides draw attention away from you, the speaker;
3. that the reason for getting on one's hind legs and giving a live oral presentation is to add value to what you could convey on a website or a book or a series of lecture notes.

So—ration the slides, and turn them off most of the time. That way, your audience will really sit up and attend to a slide when you do display it for a few moments; and they'll attend to the oral information for the rest of the time. If you display bullets summarising what you're saying, their attention will be divided; stop and display the quick written summary after you've talked about it. Stop talking for five seconds. Your audience will thank you. And ration the amount of wording on each slide, large print please. No bells and whistles, which are gimmicky and distracting.

There, I've said it. Tony (talk) 12:18, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Slides 11-13 - latest statistics for June 2013 already available.

Slides 24 - "Add your favorite restaurant" - IMO generally dangerous proposition for new users, and for WMF audience/community - very dangerous:) But "Edit your hometown" and "Upload travel photos or images from your community" are very good propositions

Slides 26 - operative/historical problems - IMO nothing important as information for wide WMF community (=ca. 99% non-VW editors); : the same slides 4-5 - for non-VW audience is IMO short information about WV-logo history and future (= one slide) is enough

Slides 23 - "Collaboration with other WMF projects" - "Extending Wiki Loves Monuments" + w:Wikipedia:GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums) can be IMO also interesting. --Alan ffm (talk) 17:44, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks have updated. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:52, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Does someone want to add a few slides on the dynamic maps expedition? What exactly is our relationship with OSM? Is there anything formal in place? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:49, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I would be happy to make the slides should I be provided with the content by User:torty or anybody else involved who is au current. Please contact me via my talk page.

Meanwhile, Travel Doc James, do look at the issues mentioned by James A above - it would be brilliant if you could mention those in your presentation and tell them how they (especially WMF officials) can help instead of reminding everybody that WMF incurred hundreds of thousands in cost to battle IB. Thanks! PrinceGloria (talk) 04:48, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

With respect to tech support unfortunately we must be mostly self sufficient. I have tried mightily to get help from the WMF to create a number of new feature for Wikipedia with little / no success. If there of those among us who are interested in developing new features the foundation would be willing to install them. The one who brought up the question of legal cost was not a WMF official but a Wikimedia movement community member by the way. Anyway IMO it was worth it. WV is cool and if we pick away at it one day the rest of the world will realize this too. It is only a matter of time. We must remember that the site is only 6 months only in this incarnation, even though the community is 10 years old. :-) Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:13, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I disagree. Projects do die here, there are many one may have never heard about that started, developed a community and ultimately failed. Wikivoyage seems "too big to fail", but it might just as well continue as something totally irrelevant to the general travel community unlike Wikipedia or Wiktionary. And with the money and effort spent by the WMF, it would have been a shame.

I do not think James was asking for a "feature" - we do have some brilliant developers here. I think he asked to be able to do the Google positioning himself, or rather ourselves, and use tools beyond the Wiki markup to help position our pages the best way we can. This is indeed something WMF has to help with, even if that would be unprecedented. But hey, development here is about doing unprecedented things, not the everyday stuff. Sometimes one needs to ask a thousand times for their request to be heard and understood as reasonable and worthwhile to fulfill.

I know who brought up the issue and I've seen the discussion, and the general tone is "why the hell did it cost that much". I do not think people at the conference should spend the first few minutes when their attention span still lasts finding out how this is all a conflict with IB that results in costs for WMF, as those who have been following already know (and seem to have pretty fixed positions on that), and those who don't care will probably not understand it correctly without going into intricacies, which is not something worth talking about IMHO. One may mention this at the end for those interested to dig deeper and find out what happened.

The important thing is that Wikivoyage is fun, useful and, despite a relatively small community, burgeoing in features as well as content. It only misses wider readership/recognition to really skyrocket like other MW projects have, and this is where other projects, communities and the WMF may help. We may develop as many cool features as we can, but without getting serious about improving out Google ranks this is not getting us multifold more users. This is the message at least I would love for the wider Wiki community to get. PrinceGloria (talk) 05:26, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yes good points. I will move the history discuss to latter in the article and first of all discuss the purpose of WV. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:57, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

If you need a screenshot of a dynamic map, here is the reference article: Tokyo/Roppongi. Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:27, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I would suggest asking Joachim User:Mey2008 directly in German for more long term plans of the dynamic maps. One crucial aspect though is localisation of OSM maps, and I believe that some Wikipedia users are going to set up a OSM map tile server for each language in WMF labs, so we could piggyback on that. There's also already a screenshot here for Singapore/Chinatown. I might look over Hong Kong and add a dynamic map there soon. Re: OSM, I have asked a few questions regarding legal issues but nothing formal yet, though a few contributors have come by with some advice. Also please look over at Wikivoyage:Roadmap/Improved_editing_interface again, since I'm about to post a few new screenshots of a listing editor. -- torty3 (talk) 04:39, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Okay we have expanded to 36 slides. Yes some of it will not be understandable as a stand alone review. Have moved discussion of the more controversial bit to near the end and started with more interesting bit. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:25, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

First a typo: in the 2nd bullet of your 19th slide, you mean "where," rather than "were." I particularly love the first 9 slides! I'm not sure how much your audience at the conference will be captivated with stats and diagrams, but I still feel like the stats on the number of articles being written, etc., are less important than the information on how to attract new contributors and potential for greater cooperation with sister sites. I would also add to Slide 29: Edit pages about the last few places you've been to. Have a great talk and a great conference! Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:02, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks and done. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:49, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Some moderately famous advice for presenters, mostly stuff the Doc covered above.

My ex was working for a government group doing management training at one point; of course they weren't well managed, but that's another story. Instructors had to prepare slides then send them off to an in-house print shop to get converted into overheads with the logo added, etc. Her first batch came back with an a note saying roughly "We are professionals here. No more than four lines on a slide, or six words to a line. Please redo these." I think that is a bit too strict, and I can easily think of places where I might make exceptions to either rule. I might even change the numbers to five and eight, but basically I'd sat they are right. Too many words are fatal. Pashley (talk) 23:25, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

You might add areas near Hong Kong. Especially Macau; I'd advise anyone visiting HK for more than a couple of days to go there as well. I find it more interesting than HK (no, not for the gambling), transport to there is easy (fast ferry, not expensive) and visas are easy for many passports.

Visas for China are harder, but the Pearl River Delta right across the border is interesting and generally significantly cheaper than either HK or Macau. I especially like Zhuhai. If anyone wants to go further afield, we have an itinerary Overland Kunming to Hong Kong that starts from HK, and interesting places like Hainan or Xiamen are fairly close. Pashley (talk) 23:11, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I've made quite a few changes to the presentation (I hope nobody minds!); not because the original wasn't good, but simply to highlight the wholegrain goodness of what was already there. :) I've changed the order of the slides around as well to try and help it flow a little better: it starts with a basic overview before becoming a little more technical; we then see WV's origins, its status quo and our goals for the future. Any thoughts? --Nick ^talk 03:11, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I think you made it much easier on the eye, Nick, although, by the original authors' own adminission and my judgement, it still is rather useless for people viewing it offline and not already knowing the topics covered (otherwise, it is quite cryptic at times). Since you let yourself edit it, I also felt free to edit one slide - I have rearranged "future directions" to put "Search" in the first place, as this is the first stop for us is Wikivoyage is to go anywhere, plus I "downgraded" reviews (I, for one, firmly oppose this functionality and I believe it merits further in-depth discussion, but it is too early to start with so many other issues at hand).

I also don't think that at this point, with torty's brilliant listings editor, we need to list "easier to add listings" as a future direction, it is already happening now. Unless you mean something else.

OTOH, there are also "future directions" not mentioned, such as:

1. all the fun mobile-based functionalities we could developed based on geolocalization and dynamic maps
2. in general, making the site more mobile-friendly
3. developing cooperation with local tourist organizations and professionals to make WV the place to put new / updated travel-related information at and a general source for that kind of information, much like WP has become for general info

Kindest, PrinceGloria (talk) 05:51, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks all. I have turned off the edit-ability of the presentation now to keep it stable for the presentation. Please send me any concerns you may have. Yes realize that some are against "reviews". It however could be a useful method of bringing more people into the project and it we keep the two separate as proposed it will not effect the current content. Planning on going to Guilin after Hong Kong. The new listing tool is not live yet is it? What should I say about mobile functionality? Agree that is important. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:48, 5 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

James, that will surely be a nice presentation! One remark: after slide 23 where you mention maps I rather miss an example of a nice WV style map, like London Hampstead district map. Danapit (talk) 09:28, 5 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Quick question and sorry for breaking the threading, but it sounds like there are some long-wanted technical features that you've asked for and haven't gotten. Do you have a centralized wishlist somewhere? And perhaps you could point to the mailing list posts, the bug reports, or other places where you've asked for those things? Thanks! Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 21 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I've been meaning to create such a wishlist. Probably the biggest priority, though, is the 7+ month-old Bugzilla:43977. --Peter ^Talk 21:08, 21 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Some lesser prioritized requests (while I'm thinking of this) include:

• Add all sister projects to our RelatedSites, so we can create sidebar links to Wikinews, Wikisource, etc.
• Allow multiple sidebar links to one RelatedSite (e.g., links to two Wikipedia articles from one Wikivoyage article).
• Allow for multiple parents in the breadcrumb trail (e.g., Russia and its subdestinations should be able to direct back to Europe and/or Asia, so Vladivostok would no longer be displayed as part of Europe!).

Most other wishlist items, unless I'm forgetting something, are already actively being developed, or are on pause pending further integration with Wikidata. --Peter ^Talk 21:16, 21 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for the quick response, Peter. Would you mind if we broke this out into a separate thread at meta:Wikivoyage/Lounge to make it easier for us to collate together the Wikivoyages' wishlists? Also: I've also started asking some developers whether they could take a look at Bugzilla:43977 (it looks like Marius Hoch has some other items on his personal TODO list, and he certainly isn't the only person in the world who could work on that issue).

By the way, I completely understand the example of Vladivostok not being part of Europe (for bug 44590: GeoCrumbs doesn't handle cases where a destination on a region boundary #isIn: more than one region)! When I was in college, I visited St. Petersburg, Moscow, and the Solovki islands to study abroad. Before leaving the US, I of course went to get any medical shots and pills I'd need, and the person talking with me looked up "Russia" in a big binder and thought I'd need something to prevent Japanese encephalitis. I had to explain that the risk of Japanese encephalitis in Vladivostok did not apply to me. :-) Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 01:33, 22 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Ha! Yes, Meta will be a better place for these discussions, as other language versions might want to "join in" on requests. --Peter ^Talk 03:13, 22 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Great! meta:Wikivoyage/Lounge#Looking to gather a unified technical wishlist - let us plunge forward! Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 17:15, 22 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi. I am often using read statistics to determine usefulness of information to readers. Tools are easily accesible for Wikipedia, but I cannot locate any for WikiVoyage. Is there any? Brg --ModriDirkac (talk) 12:09, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

E.g. Article traffic statistics, Page Views for Wikivoyage --Alan ffm (talk) 15:26, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Please update the sitenotice to reflect that voting has opened; technically, it starts at 00:01 UTC, but I don't expect a response before then. Have the other Wikivoyages been notified as well? I'll post to the Lounge. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:54, 25 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Done, but someone may need to fix it up a bit. --Rschen7754 00:10, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I am not very up on the use of non-free images. Would it be legitimate to take this image from Wikipedia and upload it locally for use in a template like this one, to mark the articles for the 12 host cities of the 2014 World Cup? Texugo (talk) 12:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

No. It is not permitted as w:Fair use. The logo is only used on Wikipedia specifically on the page for the 2014 World Cup because the logo is relevant to the event for scholarly/research purposes. The Wikivoyage license allows commercial use and the use of the logo in such a template would not be covered by any fair use defense. AHeneen (talk) 21:29, 29 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Our own policies don't allow it, because we only allow copyrighted artwork and architecture within a freely licensed photo. Globe-trotter (talk) 16:34, 30 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Gotcha. So does anyone want to suggest an icon we could use? Texugo (talk) 16:53, 30 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

A soccer ball? --Inas (talk) 06:35, 31 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Someone renamed the page Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex (the hyphen became an en dash). While I agree that the en dash is more correct, it broke the breadcrumbs of 26 pages. Is there any policy about such changes? Should we just fix the 26 broken pages? Fractal (talk) 14:24, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'd say just revert the change. The hyphen is also correct and I imagine the typical editor is far more likely to type it than an ndash; many are probably not even aware of the difference.

This is a wiki, not a typeset book; I do not think ndash should be used at all. I'd like to revert all such changes, but that strikes me as more trouble than it is worth. Pashley (talk) 14:48, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

There is no ndash on my keyboard. I will always use a hyphen for a search.

By the way, why is an ndash more correct? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:39, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

See Wikivoyage_talk:Spelling#Hyphens.2C_en_dashes.2C_and_em_dashes for related discussion. Pashley (talk) 15:45, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

If you could fix the broken pages in these cases, that would be good. But as for the change to the en dash in the first place ... it's the preference of most style guides in that instance, although if the metroplex itself consistently uses a hyphen, it's probably best to stick to that. I'd google it, but better still look through Amazon books for instances. And I think if it had been me, I'd not have bothered to change that one.

Pashley, it's disturbing to see the anti-typography attitude. That's the way the language works—you can't write proper English without dashes. Tony (talk) 15:53, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Having looked further into this example, I believe the en dash is the acceptable form. Tony (talk) 16:01, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Just for the record, I have done all of Teaching English, technical writing, and editing professionally at various times, and I can be remarkably pedantic about niggly little usage points that change meaning. For example, I have written letters to the editor or phoned radio stations about things like a claim that some crooked politician "refuted the allegation" (No, idiot, he only denied it, which is completely different.) or that "the suspect entered the bank with a gun" (No, the thief did that; the suspect is innocent until proven guilty.)

I am not anti-typography, and I do know how to use dashes in formal writing. I just do not think en dashes are worth the trouble here. Pashley (talk) 16:20, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

"I just do not think en dashes are worth the trouble here"—Pashley, that is anti-typography. I'm going to repeat here what I've just said at the spelling talk page, because it involves wider issues that need discussion at this central location.

I've observed a certain anti-professional-writing attitude on this site—not among all editors, but among some who've been here for quite a while and who appear to resist the notion of updating and improving the site. This is very disappointing. Wikivoyage cost the WMF nearly a million dollars in legal and administrative expenses, not counting the engineering impostes. The Foundation has taken on a site that is a great idea but that is now losing its market share of readership: the model is falling behind, and it needs to rethink the quality standards of its style, structure, and presentation. It desperately needs more copy-editors, gnomes, text-maintenance editors, since much of the content will be added by visitors on the go. And you know what: you guys aren't keeping up, and you won't attract these people if you insist on bad standards.

It's going to be a tough enough struggle to keep WV competitive even if the long-standing regulars are on-board with change, modification, adaptation. When I hear the stock argument "it's too much trouble", I really wonder whether this is fair to the site, the existing editors, and the potential editors, and the Wikimedia movement that has rescued WV from commercial pulp. Tony (talk) 16:25, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

By the way, we are writing a typeset book. It’s among the goals of Wikivoyage to care about printed articles, and the best travel guide shouldn’t allow typographic errors. The only issue I see is that if someone creates a new page which is part of Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, the breadcrumb will probably be broken, unless the user knows about dashes. Maybe the breadcrumb code could be changed to take care of redirects? Then the problem would not be so bad. Fractal (talk) 16:34, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

"Slightly under $350,000" is now "almost a million"? -- D. Guillaume (talk) 16:52, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

On the record by email to the Signpost, but not published, WMF CFO Garfield Byrd specifically referred to a $914,000 cost, not including engineering and integration. I found the discounting of this cost ("is not going to happen" because it's set against other savings in the relevant WMF departments) most unconvincing: a cost is a cost, and is money that could have been spent elsewhere or allocated to the reserve fund, irrespective of cost-savings in other budgetary categories.

"The $914,000 projected variance is not going to occur due to cost savings that have significantly reduced this projected variance from budget. Also, this projected number was never just for the cost of the Internet Brands litigation, but included other one time cost. The current variance from budget for Legal & Community Advocacy, Communications, Human Resources, Finance and Administration is $296,661 as of May 31, 2013. The Internet Brands litigation was tracked as a special cost item and was just under $350,000 and is part of the projected variance from budget that was mitigated by cost savings. We do not have cost for Engineering for the Wikivoyage integration, as it was not tracked as a special cost item in Engineering."

Tony (talk) 03:16, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

A pre-emptive comment: the only reason I have not reverted the change from hyphen to en dash in the title under discussion — which seems to me quite obviously the correct thing to do — is because I want to let this discussion run its course before taking action.

I see comments like "If you could fix the broken pages in these cases, that would be good.", which is fine as an expression of opinion. However, if anyone were to act on that without waiting for discussion to complete, I would be absolutely furious. Pashley (talk) 16:36, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Ah. Well, I had already moved the page back, because in addition to breaking 26 breadcrumbs it also breaks four common redirects. That's a lot of collateral damage to leave sitting around while we argue it over; I'd rather not do that.

Page titles are necessary for searches. We can display them however we like in articles, including overriding the display defaults quite easily, but the titles themselves need to be something people can type into the search box without trouble. -- D. Guillaume (talk) 16:52, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Note that renaming the page created a redirection from the page with an hyphen to the page with a dash, so that’s not an argument at all. Fractal (talk) 18:07, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hyphens and dashes are a problem on this site, in that most keyboards have only the - and _ characters, whereas there's some weird-looking code that I see used (but don't take the time to use myself) that creates hyphens. So if we care greatly about what kind of dash or hyphen is used, we need to find a way to make it more user-friendly to type such characters. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:15, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

They are in the "Wiki markup" section below the edit window. Globe-trotter (talk) 20:21, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

OK, I see that now. But it sure would be a whole lot easier if we just used single and double dashes, as typists on typewriters often did. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

You could get away with it on a typewriter because typewriters use a fixed-width font. If you want to change the site's default font to Courier New, then maybe using nothing but hyphens (-) would fly. But in a proportional font, the difference between - and – and — is significant -- especially if we expect our guides to look professional in print. LtPowers (talk) 01:32, 27 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I get that printed guides are one of our goals and the en-dash is typographically correct, but our content is created on-line and used by third party apps -- and in those cases, the hyphen is much more useable. Third party apps using our content (that I've used) don't always pick up the redirects and don't necessarily provide a box with non-standard characters. In that case, Dallas en-dash Fort Worth wouldn't be searchable. I guess we can tell developers to make their apps better or I can download a different keyboard for my cell phone that has non-standard characters, but I'm not convinced we should be making the way we title our articles other peoples' problems. I think there are trade offs between perfect typography for a print guide and being a web-based resource, and in this case we should keep to standard keyboard characters for ease of web-use, particularly since titles are important for searches. -Shaundd (talk) 23:38, 27 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I take the opposite view: the deficiencies of third-party apps (no redirects?!?) are not our problem. We cannot accommodate every quirk of said apps, and we certainly should not sacrifice our print version in an attempt to do so! Do we want to be competitive with Lonely Planet or not? LtPowers (talk) 01:16, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Of course we don't expect casual editors-while-travelling (a rich source we'd like to tap into more, yes?) to spend a couple of hours reading and absorbing the style guides before they edit. It's a natural pattern on all wikis (that "anyone can edit") for there to be a continuous push and pull between (valuable) text added in whatever style people know, and a steady gnoming program by regular editors to clean this up, harmonise it, and professionalise it; a lot of people like doing the latter—myself among them—and they too need to be recognised and nurtured as a major category of editors. It's like weeding a beautiful garden. This is the case for all WMF sites; and nowhere is this more obvious than on en.WP, where the production values are higher than anywhere else. In the increasingly competitive online travel-info marketplace, en.WV needs to position itself now to protect and increase its share, and weeding that garden is one of the underlying challenges in that task (along with deciding how the structure might be updated to compete, and getting the WMF to help or to fund such updating).

So back to the humble dash: this push-and-pull process pertains to proper typography, just as for article macro-structure formatting, linking, grammar, and other aspects of style and functionality. Many people lack dashes on their keyboard—itself a weird disjuncture with the rules of English style as promulgated by all major authorities. That is why there are three alternate methods (two of them less convenient than for those who have dashes on their keyboard, but no big deal, frankly). I urge all editors with Windows keyboards to record a macro for en and em dashes, which will enable them to write proper English in all contexts, not just here.

If we're to make it easier and more practical for editors to sift through professionalising whatever articles they can manage, I urge colleagues here to consider that an article-consistent rule for stylistic choice (and, ahem, variety of spelling where there's no clear real-world predominance of a variety) be the norm; it's already the norm for 12- vs 24-hour time format.

To conclude, en.WP has an excellent script for introducing dashes – as interruptors of either acceptable type—and for numerical ranges and day and month ranges, of which WV has a huge number. It would make a lot of sense to import this script, but it would need an editor with the right skills to do it (I suspect some tweaks might be necessary). The script produces a false positive in about one in a thousand articles (but you have to watch aircraft nomenclature and correct back manually ... 747- needs the hyphen. Tony (talk) 02:20, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I am pretty sure search ignores dashes and hyphens, so using the proper character would be better indeed. How about this: When someone steps in and pledges to port the script and fix the dashes from time to time, we change the convention; until then we stay as is for consistency. When Wikivoyage gains more volunteers, I am sure one of them will take this as their pet task. Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 01:50, 30 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Judgement of Solomon, Nick!

It's difficult for me to put in to my copy edits these unusual varieties of dash and hyphen when using my notebook (and indeed I've recently put forward a proposal to reduce the use of non-breaking spaces ( ) to make it easier (or less daunting) for casual editors), so this certainly isn't a task that I will be undertaking. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 14:59, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yes, the use of proper typography doesn't affect search engine results. Tony (talk) 03:15, 30 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I think Nick was probably referring to our own internal search facility, Tony, but yes you are right that this will have a very minimal effect on external search engines such as Google or Bing. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 14:59, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I refer to the thread above concerning the Wikimania presentation. Thinking of the larger picture here (which may well have a bearing on the Wikimania presentation), does anyone think it would be a good idea to establish a section or a page on en.WV specifically devoted to working through editors' ideas for technical improvements to the site? Would it be a practical course of action to encourage editors to survey what else is evolving on analogous sites, in terms of tech and content and process, with a view to putting on the table where we stand and where we'd like to be over the next few years?

We need at the very least to establish a wish-list, then filter it through to the viable, by consensus, and determine what might become a more official request to the WMF. What do people think? Tony (talk) 04:49, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wikivoyage:Roadmap was started a while ago, although it hasn't seen much attention recently. Would reviving that page address your concerns? -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:51, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Sure would. But it would need to be advertised widely on the site, I think; and perhaps it should be re-organised into different sections. At the moment, it starts with improving articles, listings, patrolling, which is a bit vague. I'm keen to establish the technical possibilities, which will have a bearing of course on the goals of getting more editors in, but crucially, keeping up with the needs of travelling readers. Tech costs money and has a long lead-time. I was struck, in prepping for my own trip to Europe in September and therefore for the first time wearing the user's hat, at how inadequate to my real needs much of WV's information is. Sure, there are patches where it's really good; but it misses the spot in key ways. Tony (talk) 05:00, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Postscript: I'm just reformatting the roadmap page now (no real changes, but adding some prompt questions ... feel free to change anything I've done). Is it possible to have a notice on key pages visited by regulars, perhaps linking a program to brainstorm and refine new ideas with the 10-year anniversary of the community? Tony (talk) 05:11, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I would say: 1) Discuss ideas on the most relevant talk page, or here 2) Link to the discussion from Wikivoyage:Requests for comment 3) If it is a long-term goal and there seems to be a certain consensus, add it to Wikivoyage:Roadmap. Nicolas1981 (talk) 12:06, 29 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I posted my ideas on my userpage. You could take a look at them, if you want. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 10:34, 17 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hey guys, not much for you to do but I did want to point out this change in our web setup. We have owned 'voyagewiki.com/org' last June (as a defensive move once we knew we may be taking WV/WT as a WMF project to avoid domain squatters) and it was forgotten about (it didn't lead anywhere if you went there) so the obvious place to redirect it was the corresponding wikivoyage page which is what it now does thanks to one of our lovely ops engineers :). Jalexander (talk) 22:53, 30 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I previously redirected all pages on jamguides.com (the content repository that eventually became English Wikivoyage) to wikivoyage.org. I'm assuming that this won't cause any sort of SEO penalty to Wikivoyage, but if anyone has any definitive info that indicates this hurts Wikivoyage SEO please let me know and I'll take down that redirect. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:01, 31 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Have been look around preparing for the talk and not only are there a lot of pages missing images many are also missing maps. Looking at this previous destination of the month and IMO it would be a huge improvement to have a map showing where Jiuzhaigou_Nature_Reserve is just in case I want to go there. All articles should have a map.Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:36, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

What are peoples though of this geohack tool on the toolserver? Hopefully it will move over to Wikimedia labs eventually.Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:10, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

For those wondering, here is an example of a map generated by GeoHack. I think it would be better than nothing, indeed. A more advanced tool is PoiMap2, though. The French Wikivoyage has started deploying it on a wide scale, as seen for instance here, even for articles that contain no POI. How about going ahead as well and deploying PoiMap2 on more articles? Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:16, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

We essentially do in the form of the {{geo}} map icon link at the top right of all properly tagged destination guides. But I assume you are talking about displaying it in-article using {{mapframe}}? --Peter ^Talk 06:25, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Apparently the Wikivoyage:Dynamic maps Expedition isn't very clear if you came to ask about Geohack here. It isn't suited to travel needs at all, and that's what {{PoiMap2}} and {{mapframe}} are for. I think {{mapframe}} and the listing/sandbox are ready to be deployed site wide as well, not experimental any more, by Saturday if no one objects. Please look at Wikivoyage:How to use dynamic maps for a guide on how to use them.

By the way, when I marked the template as experimental, I really meant it was experimental and while nice, did not expect it to be spread far and wide. Please check the latest Mediawiki:MapFrame.js which patches a pretty serious security hole which I overlooked and should not be in a wide release. -- torty3 (talk) 10:33, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I remain concerned that the dynamic maps may discourage future hand-crafted maps. Also, I think we should standardize on a rendering appearance for these dynamic maps; the default Mapnik is, IMO, horrible for travel purposes. LtPowers (talk) 13:23, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

In Russian Wikivoyage, we have been using dynamic maps since the moment they appeared, which is about half a year from now. The maps proved to be a very useful feature, because every new article comes with a built-in map. Additionally, they give us an impetus for updating and revamping existing articles. The total number of maps increased dramatically. The travel guides became more useful, which is a good reason to implement this feature as soon as possible.

Regarding the static maps, I personally decided that I would not draw city maps with individual listings any longer, because I simply don't have time for that. I wonder how many people still draw static maps, but I guess that we did not have more than 10-20 new maps since the launch of Wikivoyage. Therefore, our choice is between having dynamic maps or having no maps at all. Finally, from my previous map-drawing experience, I think that it is very useful to have all locations visible on the dynamic map. It helps you in choosing the right area and saves a lot of effort in finding individual places that were added by different users. If anyone still wants to create hand-crafted maps, he/she is welcome to do so. I can make a very long list of places that will benefit from a hand-drawn map, but I don't see a queue of volunteers who would be working on it. --Alexander (talk) 14:47, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

How do you go from "10-20 new maps" in six months to "no maps at all"? LtPowers (talk) 17:24, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

English Wikivoyage has ~28,000 articles. 10-20 new maps in six months means ~0.1%/year. It is nothing. Readers will never find them. We do have several hundreds of city maps drawn in the past, but many of those maps are not updated and eventually become useless. --Alexander (talk) 18:36, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

POI2 looks great and it has already been implemented on at least Travemünde and Roppongi. Dynamic maps are also easier to update which is useful in city and city district articles as they contain stuff like hotels and restaurants which appear and disappear more easily than monuments and parks do. Not to mention that drawing a map in the first place takes longer than just adding a few coordinates (of course that isn't a problem if you're good at drawing maps and love doing it). ϒpsilon (talk) 20:00, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Static maps do have some advantages over dynamic maps (and thus provide a really good comparison to help us figure out how to improve the dynamic maps), but for the vast majority of bottom-level guides, it's just not practical to keep maps updated by hand. My association with WTP kept me on point for updating Chicago and D.C. maps, but that's certainly slid since. It's also not realistic for us to expect all city, park, district, etc. guides to be illustrated with drawn maps—there is a steep learning curve for producing them, and even after mastering the process, they are time intensive. I don't really intend to keep making standalone static maps, and I plan to replace the years of hard work I've done in district article maps with the auto-generated sort ;)

There are a few issues still being ironed out on these maps, and the relevant discussions are all over Wikivoyage talk:Dynamic maps Expedition, but the big one left is working on the printable version, which is still very Beta. And LtPowers, note that {{mapframe}} supports many layers for tiles, one of which has our own custom built Wikivoyage-aesthetic. (That needs work still too.) --Peter ^Talk 01:14, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

There have been giant leaps in auto map tile production too over the past couple of years. Tools like maperative, would allow us to replace the hand painted style of maps quite quickly - if that's what we wanted. Tilemill would allow us to build our own style, emphasising features important to the traveller. --Inas (talk) 01:37, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I must say I LOVE the progress on the Dynamic Maps front and what the guys are doing. I frankly don't see much benefit in "hand-made" static maps over dynamic maps. Dynamic maps have the great advantage that they reflect the current state of the article, so if anything gets added or modified, which it constantly should as destinations change everyday, it will get reflected on the map and what the traveller needs is a guide that is up to date and a map that matches it, not a map that might match it in a few days if a merciful editor with the appropriate knowledge and skills comes round and has the time and interest to do the map. Furthermore, we need to broaden the editor/user circle, and chasing after editors to have them toil away hours by making "hand-made" maps would not be a great way to enticing them to stay.
Just to make sure - I have nothing against hand-made maps, and most of those that I saw were nothing short of brilliant. I do use them and print them out, for one they were great for my recent visit in Copenhagen. It would be brilliant if people continued to make and update them, and more people did them as brilliantly as the current maps were done. But I am just not seeing this as the way to go forward with mapping all of our articles quickly, and I firmly believe each article should have at least one, fully up-to-date map, ASAP.
Let's roll out the dynamic maps and associated template numbering ASAP and work on it together to make it even better. This is what really sets Wikivoyage apart and open so many exciting possibilities (like "Special:Nearby" and such). PrinceGloria (talk) 05:55, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Dynamic maps are the way to go, the learning curse for static maps is high and they don't update as the content updates. Only a few dedicated editors have taken the time to learn to use a vector program. And all this had to be done off-wiki, dynamic maps can be updated by everyone without needing to download and learn external tools. However, I do think the dynamic maps could look a bit more professional. We should choose one layer and stick with it. I think Mapquest Open looks a lot better than Mapnik and the custom-made Wikivoyage layer, can't we just use that one for all articles? Globe-trotter (talk) 09:11, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Is there anyway to role them out in a semi automated manner? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I don't even know how to respond. The learning curve for creating maps is not steep at all. Hand-designed maps are plainly superior to algorithmically generated maps, which is why cartography is still a profession. The location of points of interest does not change "daily" by any stretch of the imagination. I just... I can't believe this. I feel like I don't even know this community any more. LtPowers (talk) 13:03, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I don't think any of us opposes hand-crafted maps... They should be left as a preferable option, but they will never cover even our guide articles, which is only a small fraction of the Wikivoyage content. We have to be realistic about that.

Regarding the locations and their changes, I do try to maintain some articles (again, in ruvoy) on a yearly basis. I think that every year between 10% and 20% of listings are changing, because some places close down and others open or simply come to my attention. If I keep changing the article without updating the map, the period of 3-4 years is enough to make the map irrelevant to its article. We see it quite often, and we have no mechanism to circumvent this problem. It is sad, but again, we have to be realistic. --Alexander (talk) 13:59, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Exactly that, it is a matter of scale. Consider that OSM is nine years old, has over a million contributors and an active user base of 6000 people which include professional cartographers and GIS specialists, focusing exclusively on map data. Yet when I click through to some places, there's not much coverage at all. Can we realistically hope to compete with that? Or is it better for us to focus on the general travel content and reviews.

Even maps of big cities rated as star articles get neglected. What more about little towns that aren't even on the radar of people?

And I don't believe that dynamic maps and hand-crafted maps cannot go hand in hand. It does make hand-crafted maps less required, but I feel that dynamic maps in fact help make it easier to make one. I wouldn't be comfortable making maps of areas that I've only visited, let alone never been, but if Nicolas for example were to request me to make a custom map of Tokyo/Roppongi right now, it's a lot clearer and more instructive. Then insets and other adjustments that would make it a great map could be included. -- torty3 (talk) 14:31, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

(edit conflict) Whether the learning curve is high or not, hand-making maps is a very time-intensive endeavor, and it would take literally several thousand hours of work to get hand-drawn maps for even a fraction of our articles, not to mention the task of revisiting them all periodically to keep them updated. We simply do not (and will likely never) have the manpower to do things that way. I do agree that despite some limitations, the hand-drawn maps do look much nicer, and I wouldn't necessarily advocate deprecating them entirely, but dynamic maps are the only way we will ever be able to provide maps for every article, and they are really coming along and getting better all the time. And, at least for now, I really only envision them for cities and districts at the bottom of the hierarchy; hand-drawn maps will remain important for continent, country, region and metropolis articles to show how we have broken down our coverage and show highlights of things which would otherwise not show up on a map zoomed out that far. Texugo (talk) 14:37, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

But how do we encourage people to create star-worthy hand-drawn maps if there's already a good-enough hand-drawn map on the article? LtPowers (talk) 15:15, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I am not sure I understand how that question relates to dynamic maps, unless you meant "if there's already a good-enough dynamic map on the article". But as far as I know we haven't talked about whether to lift the requirement for star articles to have a traditional hand-drawn Wikivoyage-style map. Texugo (talk) 15:35, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yes, that's what I meant. But I'm not concerned only about star articles. The point is that hand-drawn maps should be our ideal, and the absence of a map on an article is an impetus to create them. How do we mitigate the loss of that impetus? LtPowers (talk) 18:14, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

OK, I understand your point, and I don't have an answer for you, but I would say it's not nearly worth preventing 25,000+ articles from getting an instant, workable, automatically updated map just so we can encourage people to hand-draw a perfect map for each one. Texugo (talk) 18:30, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I disagree with the assertion that hand-drawn maps will always be the preferable option in the future. Today we have some issues with dynamic maps, but those issues are being addressed. In the future I fail to see how a map that automatically updates when someones adds lat/long coordinates to a listing, that can scale easily based on people's preferences, and that allows you to easily browse to surrounding locales would not be preferable to a static map. I would contend that a static map should eventually become the exception, useful for countries or in situations where we need to show a Wikivoyage-specific regional breakdown, but that our goal should be to make the dynamic maps the optimal solution for the vast majority of our articles. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:40, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

^^^^ I am with Ryan on that ^^^^ PrinceGloria (talk) 18:44, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

And I am not. Hand-drawn maps give us the freedom to decide what to show and what to skip. Dynamic maps always rely on a certain tile that can't be customized for every particular destination. Additionally, dynamic maps do not solve and probably will not solve the problem of printing and offline usage. Most cities require several maps that have different scale and show different listings, as in paper travel guides. However, this should not prevent us from using dynamic maps as broadly as possible. I see no problem in leaving the option of hand-drawn maps for those who are willing to spend time on them.

To Powers' concern: I have not seen any strong impetus, at least not over the last 3-4 years. Some of the most productive map-makers have left the project, while others say that they won't spend the effort when dynamic maps are available. I simply can't imagine who will make use of this impetus, and I don't think that many new people will jump on map drawing, no matter how large the project grows. Using Inkscape is not difficult, but many (or even most?) people never used vector graphics and won't learn it only because of Wikivoyage.

I think that leaving static maps as a requirement for star articles would be a reasonable compromise, at least for the time being. --Alexander (talk) 20:37, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I think we should be doing the opposite, actually. We want the maps to be easily updateable, and by anyone. Any time someone does something as simple as removing a closed geocoded listing, they will be updating the map. Maps will be updated continuously by the enormous efforts of OSM contributors worldwide. They're infinitely more wiki and more practical in this regard. A good case in point is the map at Valle de Cocora (the star nomination of which LtPowers has now voted against for having a dynamic map). I could draw a static map from the same data, but that would make it harder for others to update, and would rob us of immediate updates when a hiker walks a new trail with a GPS device, or marks a new lodgings POI.

Several of the concerns brought up, I think, are also misplaced. Another benefit of dynamic maps is that they provide us with multiple layers per map. If you don't like the aesthetics of one layer, just click another one right on the map. The map becomes personally customizable to anyone at the click of a mouse. --Peter ^Talk 23:16, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

And not to "pull rank," but I can say with some confidence that I've done more updates on static town and district maps than anyone else here. It's painstaking work each time. Renumbering all those listings every time one is removed or another added, and then trying to keep the legend synced to the new icon numbers is incredibly tough for maps of busy districts. --Peter ^Talk 23:20, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

We cannot let "perfect" kill "good enough". I would not propose adding dynamic maps were hand drawn maps already exist. I am talking about adding dynamic maps were NO maps exists (which by the way is almost all articles). Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:22, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yet everyone seems all too willing to let "good enough" kill "perfect". Star articles should have the best maps possible, and these slipshod dynamically-generated maps look nothing like what you'd find in a quality printed travel guide. I am stunned and disgusted that anyone would think they're actually better than a good hand-drawn map. LtPowers (talk) 01:36, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Would not making it a requirement to have hand drawn maps / best possible maps for an article to become star not address this? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:42, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

[edit conflict] A map that updates itself and can be modified for different purposes on the spot is preferable to one that does not. Static maps like this are perfect only at the point in time when they are made. And your point above about cartography seems, along with your over-the-top rhetoric about this, a little strange—cartography in the modern era is GIS. And yes, our competition does use dynamic maps (Tripadvisor, Lonely Planet, Foursquare, etc.). We call our star articles perfect, while letting them fall behind reality. Keeping the maps updated for, say, Chicago is absolutely the biggest piece of the work in keeping those articles up-to-date, and it's the main reason why they're not. --Peter ^Talk 01:48, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

(edit conflict) Yosemite#Get in and Ann Arbor#Get around are two star articles with "perfect" hand-drawn maps that haven't been updated in ages and would (IMHO) be far more useful as dynamic maps. Our dynamic map capabilities aren't as good as our best static maps right now, but others have enumerated their functional and maintenance advantages, and they are improving daily with respect to the cosmetic issues that seem to be your primary concern. I don't think anyone disputes that some articles (mainly those that show Wikivoyage regional hierarchies) are probably better as static maps, but just as no one would suggest that Google maps would be better if it was a non-interactive series of static images, I'm not understanding why a dynamic map that offers so many more capabilities than a static map and that is constantly updated with the latest information would not be the "best map possible", particularly as cosmetic concerns are being addressed. Also, what Peter just said. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:55, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

All articles are better as static maps, because a static map has been customized for the unique situation that is every place on the globe. Google Maps is great, but it already exists, and does a better job of mapping than any open-source solution we have available to us. But even then, its best maps don't compare to a good printed map where the labels have been conscientiously placed and icons carefully considered for both density and clarity. Unfortunately, just as I seem to be inadequate to the task of explaining good graphic design precepts to the participants in the logo selection process (since I am only an amateur graphic designer), I cannot sufficiently explain the many advantages of a hand-drawn map because I am not a professional cartographer. (And of course, by hand-drawn, I don't mean literally; I know professional cartographers use GIS data! But they craft their maps with an eye to readability, clarity, and aesthetics that no computer algorithm can match. That's what we should do as well, at least for articles which we are claiming to surpass the best printed guides!) LtPowers (talk) 14:45, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Don't be dispirited, LtPowers.
I think many of us appreciate your cogent points that all dynamic maps are aesthetically inferior to the best hand-crafted static examples. Do you appreciate the points being made about their ease of insertion into articles and maintenance?

I think there is still much work to be done in improving the way icons are displayed and other aesthetic improvements and your eye for good readability, clarity, and aesthetics could provide valuable insights there. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 15:40, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Well, yes, they certainly are easy. And if there was nothing more to this than "these are a useful stopgap until we can create good maps for all destinations", I'd welcome their proliferation. But their mere presence will serve to strongly discourage future hand-crafted maps, and others above state that they're actually better than hand-crafted maps. Both are significant problems that I'd like to see addressed before we go forward with any more of these maps. LtPowers (talk) 22:56, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

People only make hand-crafted maps for star articles and I think leaving the current star nomination requirements as needing a hand-crafted map addresses your concern, and that is a separate issue blocking star nominations and not dynamic maps in the first place. Anyway I've been typing and re-typing my response, but I am unexpectedly busy this weekend, so this is as much as I'm going to get in today. PS do not use {{Poi}} in the first place. -- torty3 (talk) 00:20, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Only for star articles? Absurd. Look at Childs, Rochester (New York), Niagara Falls (New York), Letchworth State Park... LtPowers (talk) 00:43, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Non-star articles do not require any maps. I think that static maps should be welcome as long as they are up-to-date. --Alexander (talk) 07:54, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Powers, could you explain your ideas regarding the development of maps and cartography in Wikivoyage? --Alexander (talk) 07:54, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Regardless, there is absolutely no way to say that the new dynamic maps are not a million times better than nothing, and I would not accept holding up their implementation in the 99% of articles which currently have no map on the basis that someone wishes they were the same quality as a hand drawn map. That is asking too much. Texugo (talk) 12:38, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

If that's what you think I'm saying (and if Alexander doesn't understand my ideas at all), then I guess I've utterly failed at communication here. LtPowers (talk) 13:58, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

No, I don't understand your ideas well enough. However, I don't want to ignore your opinion, even though I feel that dynamic maps are absolutely crucial for this project.

OK, let me try to ask you a different question. Do you feel that Wikivoyage has sufficient number of maps and decent rate of map-drawing? If not, how could we improve this situation? --Alexander (talk) 14:05, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I agree completely with Texugo just above.

Taking Shanghai and its districts as an example, since I know that moderately well, we find four types of map are involved.

we have one fine hand-drawn map at Shanghai#Downtown

dynamic map links for every district

maps for the borders of each district, grabbed from Commons

A recommendation in "get in" that travellers grab the tourist bureau's free map handed out at the airport

All of those are useful, and none of them are perfect. See Talk:Shanghai#Map_stuff and Wikivoyage_talk:Dynamic_maps_Expedition#Shanghai_map for discussion of some problems.

I'd say all have a role and, as a rather non-graphical person, I'm content to let the map-makers work out where their effort is best spent. Making more hand-built maps here? Improving our interface to OSM maps? Contributing to OSM work? I can see benefits to any of those, but have no idea what the priorities should be, and anyway it seems possible different people will contribute in more than one place. Pashley (talk) 14:05, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Where to start. Again, I reiterate that dynamic maps will make it easier to make hand-crafted maps. All the current instructions already rely so heavily on OSM, which continue to come out with a bunch of output options. Maperitive itself has custom rulesets so you can actually set a shared Wikivoyage colour scheme instead of manually changing them by hand. I'm vague on the details, but as far back as WTP days I think there was a coordinates to SVG tool which would significantly cut down on the time needed to map listings. This would all come down to a base SVG map with various layers that could be tweaked in Inkscape.

Of course, this is all moot if everybody feels that dynamic maps are the way to go. Admittedly the expedition has been more focused on the technical aspects, and this is probably the largest philosophical discussion we've had over dynamic maps. The quality of hand-crafted maps is recognised, but the sad fact is that even for star articles (Ann Arbor has 250 listings (!) of which I'm willing to bet at least 10% have closed), they are not maintained at a rate that I would expect from a quality printed guide. Hence the argument for perfection doesn't even seem to apply currently, especially so for huge cities where listings may open and close everyday. Ideally yes, reach for perfection but realistically I don't see it happening, with or without dynamic maps. -- torty3 (talk) 12:45, 5 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I understand LtPowers, and agree that a perfect hand-drawn map is better than a perfect auto-generated map, especially on static media (paper, offline HTML) where maps can't be scrolled/zoomed/clicked anyway. How about we allow dynamic maps on all articles, but require at least one quality up-to-date static map for star? That would re-establish the incentive to create such maps. Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:57, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hear, hear. Well said, Nicolas1981!

As someone who loves maps I'm excited by the possibilities that are opening up with the wonderful work being done with dynamic mapping

However, we also need to give some thought as to how we can give a choice to our readers on slow or expensive connections to avoid the massive data download hit associated with embedding dynamic maps in articles. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 12:52, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Nick, are you proposing that some articles have both a generated map and a hand-designed one? That seems excessive. I'm also not sure how much of an incentive it is, as not everyone can or wants to work toward getting an article up to star quality. LtPowers (talk) 20:24, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

(Note: There is another person here really called Nick) I don't think static and dynamic should be mutually exclusive. When there are both, I suggest embedding the static map as a wiki image (as usual), and adding a link to the dynamic map in its legend. By the way, do you agree that some articles requires several maps (for instance one for the whole city and suburb POIs, and one for the tiny historical center where all of the good small restaurants are packed). Requiring static maps for stars is already quite a strong statement. Placing incentives for volunteer work is risky, because it takes the form of "You want to contribute X? Then you must contribute Y too!". Like any of our rules, it can make contributors flee.

Another advantage of dynamic maps: I believe they encourage visitors to add new POIs with latitude/longitude, just for the pleasure of seeing their work appear immediately on the map. Also, map-minded people will easily spot POIs that are missing ("the history museum is great, why is there no pin on it yet!"), leading to more participation.

A dynamic map is a great first step before creating a static map. It allows the map creator to envision the final result, decide what is the best scale, clip the right area, find an appropriate place for the legend, easily place POIs. Inexact analogy: It is a bit like adding a new POI with no contact details: Offline people won't be able to use it, but it is better than nothing, and within one year another contributor will probably come and add the contact details. Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:15, 8 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I just did a performance analysis of the Tokyo/Roppongi article, and I found out that dynamic maps actually don't take much bandwith. [3] As you can see, base page takes 1265kb, and map takes 859kb, of which 535kb should not be loaded, so that's down to 324kb when the bug is fixed: Only 20%. I find it very acceptable. Nicolas1981 (talk) 10:08, 8 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I absolutely agree that some articles need multiple maps. I just think that the dynamic map doesn't offer anything to the reader (vs editor) that a good static map wouldn't. LtPowers (talk) 13:57, 8 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

For one, I love the ability to zoom in, and the ability to scroll and see what is further down that river... exploration :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 00:58, 9 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Absolutely; browsing a zoomable world map is an entertaining pastime. But I don't go to a travel guide to do it; I go to a mapping site. There seems to be a push to be all things to all people: some want to provide hundreds of links to Wikipedia to save a few users the trouble of seeking out an encyclopedia; others want to provide comprehensive world maps to save users the trouble of seeking out a map site; next, I assume we'll have a proposal to add hovertext definitions of words to save folks the trouble of consulting a dictionary? LtPowers (talk) 15:04, 9 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

LtPowers, you're missing the mark in a spectacular way here. Dynamic maps have a bunch of advantages over static maps, to the point of making static maps largely obsolete in almost all fields. So let's go over some as they pertain to our purposes, starting with the benefits to readers, most of which have to do with the ability to customize your own visual, thematic, and content experience (this is basically why they are called dynamic maps). We don't have all of the following potentials realized yet, but they're all possible:

1. Readers can customize their experience to their own aesthetic preferences. If a reader prefers the familiar OSM Mapnik scheme, they can choose that, or switch to our Wikivoyage layer at the click of a button. If a reader needs a high contrast colors map, a map with larger or smaller icons, etc., again, they can get that with one click.
2. Readers can customize their experience to their own content needs. A reader could click a button to show only restaurant listings, or can zoom in to only look at one area. This is obviously of enormous use in printing maps customized to the reader's needs.
3. Readers can customize their thematic experience by clicking for other features, like a topo layer, bike paths, bus routes, etc. A topo layer is often going to conflict with (crowd out) other information presented, but a user might have a special use for it.
4. Readers can navigate elsewhere via the map itself: a user looking at the map for Washington, D.C./East End could pull up the icons showing nearby geocoded articles to jump to adjacent district articles like Washington, D.C./National Mall or Washington, D.C./West End.

Those four are enormously useful, and are just what come to mind off the top of my head without thinking much about this. But the notion you are advancing about advantages to editors not being relevant to readers is just 100% wrong. (And I'm not talking about the ease of creation--they are superior even when you have a motivated editor pushing an article up to star status.) Here's why:

1. Maintenance workload. I personally have contributed 101 maps with listings currently displayed on our site (I just checked). I can count on two fingers the number of times that I've seen someone else upload a listings update to any of them--the wiki method that allows us to keep content up-to-date is absolutely not working with city/district maps. So let's say I update each once a year, budgeting maybe 25 minutes for the chore per map. That's 42 hours of work to keep them updated on just a yearly basis, and that doesn't include time spent checking that the articles themselves are up to date! Moreover, there's far too high a likelihood that I screw up the numbering between the legends and all the individual icons. The end results are simple and are to the detriment of our readers: a) outdated maps, 2) significant error introduction, and 3) time wasted that would-be mapmakers should put to much better use in developing content.

So what are the advantages of static maps? There's really just one: control by the final mapmaker. When drawing a map in an SVG editor, the mapmaker has pretty much full control over every aspect of display, in terms of what to include and how to show it. Here's a pretty one that I made, with selectiveness of display terms of which street names are displayed, as well as labels for the sports stadium and only one of the parks. The other biggie is icon size, but that's something I envision we'll be able to let readers customize—remember that all this extra control to the mapmaker is taken out of the hands of the end user!

If the proposal from this thread is that our best articles should omit dynamic maps, then I think we've reached very wrong conclusions. Maybe this will only become clear to some as our capabilities with dynamic maps improve—they're just in their infancy right now. --Peter ^Talk 22:46, 9 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

If the proposal from this thread is that our best articles should omit static maps, then we've reached very wrong conclusions. A good cartographer can beat a computer every day of the week and twice on Sundays. The profession of cartography isn't going away anytime soon, no matter how good Google Maps gets, and there are good reasons for that that I'm apparently completely failing to communicate here. That's on me, but I don't know how else to put it. The dynamic maps are nice toys for online use, but they are not suitable for printing in any way, shape or form; relying exclusively on them is a step back, not a step forward. LtPowers (talk) 23:48, 9 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

LtPowers - you are making your point very clearly, and Peter has outlined his counter-arguments. If you disagree with any of his points let's discuss, but if the argument is simply that a cartographer can make a better looking printed map then that doesn't appear to be a persuasive reason to ignore all of the benefits that Peter has enumerated. If our primary goal was to make maps that people print out and hang on walls then I would agree with you, but since 1) our primary goal is to produce free, complete, and up-to-date travel guides, 2) we can continue to improve the printability of dynamic maps, and 3) for the reasons Peter outlined dynamic maps are far, far better references for online use (our most common use case), I agree 100% with him that the technology has reached a point where they should become our focus. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:29, 10 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

(edit conflict) You keep alluding to esoteric knowledge that you cannot communicate, but you are instead communicating a lack of familiarity with the field of cartography. Google Maps is produced by cartographers. Virtually any print maps of any kind you see today are printed more or less directly from dynamic systems. You aren't bothering to acknowledge any of the long list of very meaningful advantages of dynamic maps enumerated in my last comment or prior throughout this long thread, and you aren't explaining the advantages of static maps beyond weird blanket statements and straw men like "nice toys," "not suitable for printing in any way, shape or form," "the dynamic map doesn't offer anything to the reader (vs editor) that a good static map wouldn't," "I am stunned and disgusted that anyone would think they're actually better than a good hand-drawn map," etc. That's making this discussion frustrating and less productive than it should be. --Peter ^Talk 00:33, 10 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Modern printed maps are computer-assisted, but their final aesthetics rest in the hands of expert cartographers. This parallels our process with taking data from sources like OSM and carefully arranging the information for readability and clarity. I have acknowledged that the dynamic maps are easy, and fun to play with, and useful; I'm not sure what more you want on that front. As well, only Peter and Ryan appear to be unable to recognize the strengths of hand-designed maps, so I could make a similar complaint: this discussion is more frustrating and less productive because you aren't bothering to acknowledge the many advantages to static maps that I've laid out in the past. To Ryan: Where I disagree with Peter's points is in his dismissal of "the advantages of static maps" as "just one": "control by the final mapmaker". Embedded in that seemingly small 'advantage' is a very big point, though: the entire purpose of maps! The purpose of a map is to show, clearly and understandably, where things are in relation to each other. That requires precise control by the mapmaker. Have you not seen these dynamic maps with icons overlaying text, and each other? And I am appalled that we are dismissing the print version so easily; last I checked that was still one of our bedrock Wikivoyage:Goals and non-goals. Do you want our maps to be competitive with those in printed guides or not? LtPowers (talk) 17:28, 10 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Our core disagreement seems to be this: you say that creating a good map "requires precise control by the mapmaker", while Peter and I dispute that statement and are arguing that any display issues with dynamic maps are minor inconveniences that are easily rectified by zooming or hiding layers, and that the list of advantages Peter outlined (that I assume you do not dispute) far outweigh any disadvantage due to the default display issues. Given those two positions, we may have to agree to disagree that moving control of map display from a "cartographer" to a user who can now customize what the map shows and how it shows it is detrimental enough to outweigh the many advantages offered by dynamic maps. A strong argument that Peter has made is that giving the user (rather than the "cartographer") control is an additional advantage, as that user can now easily create a customized map that is tailored to their specific travel needs. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:13, 10 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure why you keep putting "cartographer" in quotation marks... Customizable maps are good, to an extent (it's easy to go too far), but I don't see any rational way to achieve that without sacrificing the many advantages offered by a well-constructed hand-designed map:

1. A carefully designed static map can achieve a level of clarity, aesthetics, and simplicity that even the best dynamic maps cannot.
2. Static maps provide the information they need to provide right there, without requiring input from the user.
3. Relatedly, the interactive features of the dynamic map are useless in print, leaving a hand-designed map the only way to present a useful guide to the print reader.
4. A hand-designed map can be designed explicitly for the unique properties of a given destination, rather than needing a single solution that works for all.

It's unquestionable that these dynamic maps will greatly enhance our guides that do not have maps. But I would be disappointed to see hand-designed maps fall by the wayside simply because dynamic maps are available, and I really could not countenance the deprecation of hand-designed maps. LtPowers (talk) 21:04, 10 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

OK, maybe we can now have an actual conversation about this... I definitely agree with your point #1, although I think you critically underestimate the influence that you as an individual contributor can have over the default appearance of a dynamic map. It requires some very basic work setting up defaults in the article itself, and may require some work on OpenStreetMap itself (which is much easier than trying to import their huge files and edit them in SVG format).

Number 2, though, strikes me mostly as a disadvantage. Preventing users from being able to use their own input to get what they want from the map (focusing on only the content they want, the appearance they want, etc.) is one of the most obvious reasons of why static maps are inferior (in both online and printed environments).

Number 3 is dead wrong for reasons I've already covered above (I'm resisting a temptation to just copy-paste my earlier comment). Users can choose what sort of map they want to print via clicking layers. Readers with visual impairments can select a scheme that is more readable in terms of color, text size, etc. Users can choose to print only the content they are interested in (turn off icon layers & keep only bike layers, turn off all icon layers other than restaurants, turn on topography, select only a small portion of the map, etc.). Brilliantly, we don't even need to maintain the information in those layers, since OSM will do it for us. I would never contest that static maps have their advantages for printing—I'm intimately familiar with the advantages, but to claim that dynamic maps don't have advantages for printing is absolutely, positively, completely wrong.

Number 4 is also wrong, in missing the whole point of what a dynamic map is: it's dynamic. The notion of one-size-fits-all goes out the window when readers (and editors, in choosing defaults) can choose how the map displays. Topography is usually not too important, but it's great to have for a mountainous hiking route, so just turn on that layer (editor-chosen defaults, or user selected); want biking routes?—click the layer; color schemes; content themes (just attractions, just restaurants, etc.). The opposite, however, is true of static maps—they are one-size-fits-all for users. The map editor makes their best judgement of what to include and how to present it, but those choices are denied to the end user.

These are all reasons why map editing with graphics software is not something that geography departments are even bothering to teach any more—GIS technology has developed so rapidly and our capabilities today are so radically different from even 10 years ago, that static presentation of maps is fast becoming obsolete. Intervention before printing is possible in the dynamic system itself. This is why "cartographers" is starting to show up in quotes, because you're attributing a meaning to it that absolutely is not shared by professional cartographers, who view computers and GIS systems as their tools, not competition. We were stuck in the 90s before, because we didn't have any developers interested in creating custom mapping tools for our own project. Somewhat to my amazement, that's no longer true, and we should take full advantage of this.

Lastly, it would be absurd to ignore the enormous advantages in maintenance and accuracy of dynamic maps. Human error (mostly typos) is a big problem, especially when performing listings updates on icons numbering in the hundreds. I have a lot of experience with this. Allowing all users to take part in the maintenance (by just editing the article text, or by "external" editors working on OSM) allows us to finally crowdsource this work, instead of relying exclusively on a handful of superusers. This will mean maps that are more up-to-date and more accurate, which is just another huge advantage for the reader. --Peter ^Talk 20:33, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry, but I just can't get past the fact that these maps look like crap. They really do. Icons overlapping text, missing text labels, inefficient icon and text placement. Why would we want to make our users fiddle with settings just to get something that looks mediocre? I can't deny the advantages of dynamic maps, but I just don't see how we can consider any of our travel guides to be among the best on the planet without a good travel-style map that prints up as well as any in Lonely Planet or Fodor's. It's nice that users can customize their maps for printing, but you're trying to have it both ways a bit; one of the mitigating factors for dynamic maps is that it's okay if they're not perfect layout-wise because users can scroll and zoom them, but that mitigation is not applicable to print versions. Also, I also view computers as GIS systems as tools; it is you who is viewing them as mapmakers themselves. I still say it requires human intervention to create a good map, and that intervention should rest on us, the authors, not our readers who may not have the technical savvy to fine-tune a map that looks good. LtPowers (talk) 02:22, 13 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Some of the things you say in this thread are amazing to me. I just said, verbatim, that cartographers view computers and GIS systems as their tools. And then you state the exact same belief and say I claim the opposite? What's the deal, seriously? Are you having a laugh at my expense? Human intervention occurs at nearly every step of the way in a GIS, but we'd be able to crowdsource that work, instead of having a handful of people (mostly me and PerryPlanet?) do virtually all of it.

The technical fiddling required to see different street names and deal with icon placement (an issue at lower zoom levels) is just double clicking. People overwhelmingly use online mapping services like Google Maps instead of the printed maps you used to buy at gas stations, so they're pretty used to that functionality, and clicking layers is likewise familiar (street map/satellite/etc.) and easy. Static maps do require less manipulation to get a good print copy, and you don't have to worry about perfection of display at multiple zoom levels (you do have to worry about whether it will print legibly in-article, and whether what's readable to you is even vaguely readable to everyone). That's probably their biggest selling point. But with all the other advantages of dynamic maps... I think the cost/benefit analysis has to favor the dynamic maps. Having created 101 static maps with icons literally numbering in the thousands (I think Chicago alone has more than 1,000) to keep updated, I feel the need to diffuse the workload more deeply than most, perhaps. And FWIW I've always thought commercial travel guides had awful maps—ours are usually way better. If the bar is to get our dynamic maps printing better than the in-guide LP maps, then I expect we'll arrive there soon. --Peter ^Talk 03:42, 13 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

And you scoffed when I said I was having trouble explaining myself... I agree when you say cartographers "view computers and GIS systems as their tools". We do the same thing. What I was trying to say is that you seem to be of the opinion that these computers and GIS systems can do it all by themselves, producing the dynamic maps that everyone seems to like so much. I'm saying that computers and GIS systems are just tools; they can't produce good maps by themselves, and need a human cartographer to refine the information into an aesthetically pleasing, easy-to-understand form. As for the rest, I strongly disagree that the advantages of dynamic maps outweigh the disadvantages to the point of deprecating hand-designed maps. When you can find a computer that can produce a map comparable to File:Map - Walt Disney World - Hollywood Studios.png (including the orientation selection), then maybe we can talk. Until then, I can't imagine telling anyone "No, we don't need your map; we have computers!" LtPowers (talk) 23:41, 14 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

It would be foolish for me to assume from the silence on this issue that I've brought everyone around to my point of view. Are we going to continue on the road toward deprecating hand-designed destination maps in favor of mass-produced "good enough" dynamic maps? LtPowers (talk) 14:09, 30 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

I like both, and would prefer to see both when possible. A good custom map is a thing of beauty as well as a way of displaying the information the maker considers most useful, while a dynamic map gives a wider range of options. On the other hand, a good custom map can be a lot of work, and a dynamic map can be better than a crappy custom map, and certainly better than no map at all, which is the default condition of most articles. Ideally, I like to see a location map, giving the position at a glance, and a custom map showing the detailed layout and the scope of the destination. A dynamic map can often be more useful when working out how to get to a specific place. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:03, 30 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

@LtPowers - I can't speak for others, but silence on my part has been due to a lack of anything new to add to what's already been said. My position remains that I think the dynamic maps are superior to static maps in the ways that have already been enumerated (and I would emphatically state that they are not just "good enough" maps), and where they have layout or aesthetic disadvantages (which I would continue to argue are disadvantages that are far outweighed by their advantages) are being addressed as the technology rapidly improves. As PeterS notes, there will always be some places where a static map makes sense, such as with dive sites, Wikivoyage region maps, or "overview" maps where the data the map is trying to show (underwater topography, region boundary, simplified overview) is not handled well using OSM data. However, for cases where the map is showing listing locations I'd like to see dynamic maps eventually become the default for all of the reasons that have been previously discussed. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:56, 30 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

I don't understand how you can admit that dynamic maps often have "layout or aesthetic disadvantages" while simultaneously disagreeing that they're merely "good enough" and not ideally suited to every destination. LtPowers (talk) 18:32, 30 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

To flip your statement around, would you say that static maps lock users into a specific map area, are quickly out of date, lack the benefit of data generated by OSM, are potentially unusable to visually impaired readers, prevent a user from zooming in on areas of particular interest, cannot be customized to a specific traveler's needs, etc, but are superior because the creator can ensure that they never have "layout or aesthetic disadvantages"? We fundamentally differ on the value of aesthetics vs the value of the additional functionality offered by dynamic maps. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:02, 30 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

Certainly both approaches have some disadvantages, but you specifically claimed that dynamic maps are better than "just 'good enough'", implying that they are in fact ideal. I apologize if I misread your intent. To answer your point, all of those functions can be achieved using other tools, tools which will almost always be better designed, faster, and more familiar to readers than our own dynamic maps. A good-quality static map is pretty much unique to the travel-guide realm. I don't think I'm just being self-aggrandizing when I say that this map has inherently more value to the traveler than this one, even (or especially) if the latter were to be peppered with numbered icons. LtPowers (talk) 00:39, 1 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

I was a bit bold and just added a 2 minute video to Lancaster (Pennsylvania), so I might as well do it here also.

I've done a couple of these historic districts as videos on Wikipedia and figure that Adamstown, PA is much better known than Delta, PA, or (the soon to be released) Wellsville, PA. My main question is whether Wikivoyage would be interested in this type of "video" if I were to get into better known topics such as "A walk up Broadway, NYC", "A walk on the National Mall, DC" or maybe even "A tour of the Kremlin"?

Please let me know either here or on my Wikipedia talk page.

Smallbones (talk) 19:13, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Since videos can't be watched when our guides are printed. I doubt if it would be a good idea to introduce videos in the articles. --Saqib (talk) 19:33, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

For this type of video, any frame can be shown as a photo from Commons, so the video can easily be changed into a single photo for printing. I'm more surprised, however, by the implied policy that everything here must be printable. I know WP:NOTPRINT doesn't apply here directly, but it seems like a surprising departure. Is audio allowed here? gif files? External links? Smallbones (talk) 20:07, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

The policy of "neutrality of medium" is explicit here, not implied, though I can't find the page right now. To answer your questions: Audio: No. Images: Upload them to Wikimedia Commons, then link them as thumbnails. External links: Please read the external links page for guidelines. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:13, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Nice video: appropriate music, well lit and a steady camera. Personally, I don't think that the inability to print a video should no more veto video embedding than the inability of blind people to see still images should veto their use.

However, even though I'm probably one of the more aged editors here, I'm usually ahead of the curve here in my opinions and (remembering what happened to another editor's earlier introduction of a non-still image file about penguin calls) I wouldn't hold your breath. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 20:22, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

The basic idea sounds really cool! Seriously! Sadly I'm afraid it can't be implemented here for the above mentioned reasons. Your idea also got me thinking more about the combination WV+video. How about making 2-5 minute video guides highlighting the most important points of interest of our destinations a bit like an extremely short version of Lonely Planet's Globe Trekker episodes. They'd be uploaded to YouTube where also people who've never heard about Wikivoyage could find them (and subsequently come here to read the rest, get more and more interested, eventually become contributors themselves and...). Comments? ϒpsilon (talk) 20:35, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Great promotional idea! It's no good having great articles if few people read them. Terrific! --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 21:00, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

As you know, Frank, this site operates on consensus, and you also know how to try to change consensus. I'm not convinced it's so important for everything in this guide to be printable, myself, as online reading is increasingly standard. Would you like to reopen a discussion about that? What would be the right talk page for such a discussion? I like your idea, too, Ypsilon. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:37, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Sometime in the last 7 years, this consensus thing got twisted back to front. At the beginning we were able to plunge forward and do new things and only if there was a consensus not to do something did we have to halt progress. Now it seems that consensus is needed to make any change, however much this benefits the traveller, or however much it seems obvious. A prime example of this negative attitude is our current image policy. This really isn't the Wiki way. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 20:57, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I may not be as longtime an editor on this site as you are, but I think what you're trying to do - unilaterally buck an established consensus instead of trying to change it with an argument in a discussion - is not the Wiki way. So please stop freelancing and engage in a discussion. I would like to reopen this, too - the right way. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:02, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Can you point me towards that strong-verging-on-unanimous consensus discussion not to have video? This is the only mention I could find: Wikivoyage_talk:Image_policy#Audio_files The way I read that, it tailed off inconclusively like too many of our recent discussions. This "consensus of stasis" needs to be reversed so that we have less of the Germanic attitude of "what is not specifically allowed is forbidden"! --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 21:28, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wikivoyage:Image policy#Other media - "...do not use other media files like digital sound clips or video images.". As Ikan noted, your tendency to make contentious changes for the sake (apparently) of making a point is counter-productive to actually implementing the change you want to see put in place. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:35, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Ryan, where do you think the best place for reopening this discussion is, Wikivoyage talk:Goals and non-goals or Wikivoyage talk:Image policy? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:39, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

The broader discussion about whether the emphasis on print is still relevant as an overriding goal and whether it is implemented at the expense of our online presence is probably best done at Wikivoyage talk:Goals and non-goals, but if we're just discussing the specific point about whether videos should be allowed, and if so what standards should govern their inclusion then the image policy talk page would make sense to me. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:57, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I too think that's a discussion worth re-opening. I get why we want our guides to be easily printable, but I don't see why that should prevent us from having /additional/ multimedia features online. If, as Smallbones says, a short video like this could be easily replaced with a single picture, no-one loses anything when printing. I guess we'd need a separate discussion about when and how video's (or whatever else) are wanted in an article, but let's not throw out a whole concept like this, because it doesn't print. Thanks for bringing it to the table, Smallbones :-) And Ypsilon, I like your idea, although I imagine it will be hard, as it would have to be pretty cool productions.JuliasTravels (talk) 21:08, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Not the least bit interested in re-opening this discussion at this point. There are just too many variables and it's nearly guaranteed that the vast majority of videos uploaded are going to be cheesy in some way or other. I wouldn't even really want to consider allowing them unless we developed and enforced extremely professional, very consistent, and very high-quality standards which define a Wikivoyage-style of making videos for use in our articles, with very clearly established purposes and goals which included strict guidelines on content, titling styles and fonts, scene-changing, people in videos, music/sound/narration, credits, length and format restrictions, etc. etc. I really don't mean to criticize the video posted above, since it's fine for what it is, but even that one is not acceptable to me, not least because it is actually not even a video but a somewhat glorified slideshow of still shots with some zoom and pan added to them, containing zero actual video footage (and I don't think we are necessarily after new ways to squeeze in more still shots). Still, I cannot help imagine that most submissions will be much worse, either with cheesy music or cheesy fonts or cheesy scene change effects or something else cheesy. Let's face it, lots of people can take good pictures but the overwhelming majority of the editing public at large generally does not know how to make high quality, professionally edited videos, despite what they may think. I don't think arguing about this is going to be a very good use of our time at this point. There is way too much cheese on that pizza. Texugo (talk) 22:08, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Like our travel writing, this is a subjective call of judgement. If you don't like a video and think it's not useful to travellers, then you have the same right to remove it from an article as you do with any other file or piece of writing you think is cheesy - no substantive difference.

I do think it would be useful to give some positive and helpful guidance as you suggest. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 22:32, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Well, before reading this, I started a discussion at Wikivoyage talk:Image policy#Proposal to allow video files. You make good points. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:18, 1 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

This is a really nice video (and I mean it, I enjoyed it), but in the end it is just a collection of steady images set to some music. Frankly, to me it doesn't really make much difference. I'd rather have more pics in the article and a good map than videos. Moreover, try to update a video like that, especially if well-cut and really set to music (rather than just having music in the background while the pics change every 5 secs). I would be against allowing such not to waste people's creative energy on making those. That said, if you enjoy doing those, there is nothing to prevents you from making those and uploading to Commons and YouTube. PrinceGloria (talk) 04:56, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I, for one, think we need to take the scope of the question beyond merely allowing video files, and instead rethink the entire part of our policy that discourages content that a) isn't easily translatable to the print format and b) encourages, or rather over-encourages, articles that are short in length and light on non-textual bells and whistles that would take a long time to load on a slow Internet connection.

I think of it in terms of a simple cost/benefit analysis. Perhaps when we began on Wikitravel in 2003, there were large swaths of the world where high-speed Internet was unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Nowadays, however, this is true in far, far fewer cases than ten years ago—most places at least have Internet cafés where decent connections are available. There's certainly some remnant of that segment of our readership that benefits noticeably from our policy favoring quick-loading pages, but let's contrast that with the much larger segment that does have reliable access to affordable high-speed Internet, and is struck by the frankly boring look to much of our website, particularly compared to Tripadvisor and other travel-related sites. The new Main Page that we introduced earlier this year, with the banner images, was a step in the right direction—but at the same time, it violates the spirit of our less-is-more images policy, which, though it's gradually fallen by the wayside over the past years, is technically still in effect. If nothing else, we should reconcile those two things.

I think it's a mistake to deprive our site of the kind of visual pizzazz and innovative features that might potentially make Wikivoyage stand out from the pack and give our struggling readership levels a little boost (especially absent any solution to our massive SEO issues) in order to spoon-feed a relatively small number of travelers who happen to be visiting places that are true backwaters and didn't have the foresight to print off the pages they needed in advance. Sometimes when I surf our site I have to be reminded that this is 2013, not the '90s. A lot about Wikivoyage looks so old-school that I half-wonder where the cutesy little animated GIF icons, "Under Construction" clip-art, and web counters are.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:23, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I do agree with Andrew here - we need to be remember that, unlike Wikipedia, Wikivoyage exists in a market swamped by free travel guides. Yes, ours comes with a community and yes, it's a friendly, not-for-profit one at that, but to the end-user who simply wants a travel guide, that is of little importance. I am certainly not saying that we are unprepared to change - in the time I've been on here I've seen several very large changes to Wikivoyage but, as has been said, it still looks quite 'old school'. Whilst the Media-Wiki software is responsible for a lot of the aesthetics, I believe that more could be done. The world today is a lot more connected than it was when this site began and we need to keep up - prioritising offline use for an online travel guide when books still abound and print-outs will convey most (if not all) the necessary information feels like we are pandering to something of a niche audience.

In truth, there is no 'magic wand' (at least as yet) that we can wave and boost our Google rankings - the best way to get more people through the door is to make Wikivoyage better than the rest. Yes, our coverage is wider than some other sites, but a lot of it is either very limited or focussed on *ahem* sub-prime tourism destinations. I think WV needs some sort of unique selling point, something that we don't presently have (Feel free to disagree!). Could videos go some way to filling the gap or are there any other ideas?

We do have a lot of very high-quality content on here, but we need to display it in the best possible light - easily navigable but exciting and different. At present we remain very similar to a (much) more popular site that holds a grudge against us - not the best position to be in. To counter the other site we need to pull out all the stops and try every possible technique (including short, specially selected videos) to give this site the 'razzmatazz' it needs to flourish. The pagebanners that are now present on almost every page are a great example of the sort of innovations that we require; if we want WV to grow in the future we need to embrace what is available at present. :) --Nick ^talk 01:52, 5 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

From the objections I understand, I've revised the proposed video presentation/link (see right). The photo is printable just like any other photo, the link to the video on Commons will add essentially nothing to upload times - only readers who click the link will see the video in any way. I don't think you should expect too much from this type of video right away - I think it might be of use in limited articles, and I'm not about to run around the world making them. On the other hand, I could very well do - and would enjoy doing - similar things with the Boston and Baltimore Heritage Trails, Independence Park in Philadelphia, or maybe a short battlefield tour at Gettysburg. I'd think the traveller and WV could very well benefit from these. Smallbones (talk) 03:10, 5 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I just happened across that other site's Twitter account and notice that they are posting images via TwitPic. I clicked on one at random and was presented with this picture of Khao San Road in Bangkok, without any credit to User:Globe-trotter, who originally uploaded it there. The only way to find the credit is to back out of Twitpic and click on the separate link in their post that leads to their article, where you can find the same picture and click on it for credit. There are a number of similar posts to other CC-by-SA images (I came across ones by User:(WT-en) Burmesedays, User:Shaund, and other users I recognize), and at least one other post with no link to their corresponding article (as a "guess where this picture is" game). If this weren't already enough to constitute a breach of copyleft, we also find this in the small print on TwitPic's website:

By uploading content to Twitpic you give Twitpic permission to use or distribute your content on Twitpic.com or affiliated sites.

...

You retain all ownership rights to Content uploaded to Twitpic. However, by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and Twitpic's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

I don't have any idea what, if anything, could or should be done about it, but I did want to bring it up. Just another example of our former slavelord's less-than-exemplary understanding of wikis, selling out their own license... Of course, if it is you who uploaded one of those pictures, you could actually do something about it... Texugo (talk) 22:29, 2 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

That is naughty of them! With the WV Twitter account I've tweeted the creator's name (and a link to Commons) for any image that we've used (only in the cover image at present) - is that sufficient? The background proper was created by me from a public domain source. Is there anything we can do about their infringements? --Nick ^talk 00:40, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Send a cease and desist letter. Also send a note to TwitPic that one of their users is uploaded content to which they do not own the copyright and which is not compatible with with their licensing agreement and that you wish it removed. Or appropriately attributed and the license made clear per CC BY SA requirements. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:16, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Nick: You also need to specify and link the license, if it's Creative Commons. LtPowers (talk) 01:33, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the info! It's good to know! I've added a link now. --Nick ^talk 02:29, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Possibly anyone could notify Twitter, but I think a cease & desist letter would have to come from the copyright holder.

The Free Software Foundation are sometimes quite aggressive about GPL enforcement; would Creative Commons take any action over violation of their license? Pashley (talk) 02:54, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Neither CC or the WMF will likely do much. It is the person who owns the copyright to the content in question that is best positioned to pursue this. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:59, 5 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Do we have maps of hiking or mountain biking trails? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:30, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I see moab is missing them. Think of getting a GPS to make some. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:32, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

[4] ;) --Peter ^Talk 01:50, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

An almost finished example in the article Rheinsteig. The GPX tracks can be recorded in OpenStreetMap. They will be displayed in the layer "Hiking" including the way signs. -- Joachim