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Sleeper tickets
The article now says that "Advance tickets for overnight trains only allow the booking of a seat, not of a bed", which seems strange. I suppose everybody will book their beds beforehand, rather than just trust their luck – and there would be quite some chaos if people tried to book that bed on the train. Are the sleeper tickets (or some of them) available later than those just for seats? Or is this just a bad joke? --LPfi (talk) 17:59, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
- Maybe the person adding that has been editing the wrong country article? For sleeping trains I've always bought all the tickets beforehand either at the station or online, and nothing on VR's site suggests this would've changed. --ϒpsilon (talk) 19:08, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
€8.70–10.40
In "Places to eat", LPfi just updated lunch prices, thanks for that. Nevertheless, to my understanding we're trying to give the reader a general idea of what a lunch would cost, and therefore I think we should give the range in euros without cents, ie. "around €10", "€8-11" or something like that. The current "exact" version almost implies that there are some legal limits on what a lunch is allowed to cost... --ϒpsilon (talk) 11:28, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, you are right. I noticed the earlier price range was labelled "in 2011", and was too lazy to figure out how to round it sensibly. The sums are exact in that the coupons are of fixed value (10.40, 9.80, 9.30 and 8.70) and having to add change without taking something extra would upset those using them – but that is just unnecessary trivia for the traveller. --LPfi (talk) 13:49, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
- Voyagers rarely carry Finnish lunch tickets :) --ϒpsilon (talk) 14:23, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
- No, but prices are set to the nominal value of the tickets, as those paying with the tickets tend to choose alternatives with those prices. But never mind the details. Some travellers may of course be puzzled by several places serving lunch to the exactly same price, so if we have a good compact wording there is nothing wrong with giving some background. --LPfi (talk) 17:22, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
- Voyagers rarely carry Finnish lunch tickets :) --ϒpsilon (talk) 14:23, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
"Beware of limited Finnish shopping hours"
Actually, I'd say the opening hours of shops are pretty much the same as in Europe in general, if not even slightly longer. For example in Germany and everything further south, it's not normal for shops to operate on Sundays. ϒψιλον (talk) 15:35, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, probably. I suppose somebody has been travelling in countries where longer hours are common. We could just give the hours. --LPfi (talk) 17:24, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
- This is probably a holdover from the era when shopping hours were legally limited. In the United States, they were and are not, so there was a contrast. Today, we have even some Prismas open 24 h. --Vuo (talk) 22:44, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
- There is also the weak trade union tradition in USA, and the trade unions having become weaker in Finland. There is little need for legislation of shopping hours if night-time and Sunday wages are high. They are still too high for most grocery stores to operate 24 h. Such operations are mostly limited to places serving long-distance lorry drivers (thus having enough customers round the clock) and those with a very large customer base in the neighbourhood (such as in Helsinki). --LPfi (talk) 14:57, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
- This is probably a holdover from the era when shopping hours were legally limited. In the United States, they were and are not, so there was a contrast. Today, we have even some Prismas open 24 h. --Vuo (talk) 22:44, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
Racism
I undid an edit that changed racism not being a problem in "the cosmopolitan major cities" to it not being a problem in "the Helsinki area", and added organized pickpockets arriving from Africa. The latter seems highly unlikely, the long voyage seems to be too expensive to be worthwhile – and isn't it hard to get the needed visas?
But I wonder if also the old sentence is prejudice; Nagu was a prime example on how immigrants were welcomed in the local community and the "tomato capital" Närpes has a long tradition of welcoming immigrants to work. I suppose there are places off the beaten track where foreigners are rare and met with prejudice, but are those prejudices typical for the countryside? I suppose racist gangs being a problem rather in towns than in villages.
I know racism can be a problem, and I would recommend to keep a low profile in nightclub closing hours if you are obviously non-Finnish, but I really don't know whether racism otherwise is a problem for visitors to the country. Does anybody know? What wordings should we use?
--LPfi (talk) 15:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
- Here's my take on it.
- Pickpocketing, burglaries and other property crimes inasfar they are perpetrated by foreigners, are to my understanding mostly perpetrated by folks from the so-called new EU-countries.
- Overall Finland is about as safe for non-white visitors and immigrants as western Europe in general. In smaller rural communities, I'd say people ("who've never been abroad and never will") have more prejudices against foreigners, than in major cosmopolitan areas where it's common to see and interact with people from different cultures every day. Though racism is much less of a problem in Swedish-speaking Finland, where as you mentioned it's quite common that people from the all over the world have integrated well also into small towns. Organized racism with Nordic resistance movement flags and baseball bats, on the other hand, is more prevalent in bigger cities where they have "more to protest against". But again, Finland is not by a long shot particularly dangerous for non-white foreigners to visit. Ypsilon (talk) 16:52, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
- Makes sense. I think it may boil down to that warnings are unnecessary, and we hope that not approaching those people with bats and NRM flags in a dark alley at pub clothing times is common sense (which we often recommend using). In the rural communities people might be staring, but they will not go to fetch a bat and getting stares is not something we need to warn about. --LPfi (talk) 20:10, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
- Yeah, one has to put it into perspective, and we need just to look 800 km southeast where a few years ago someone from Caucasus or Central Asia was suspected of a stabbing, and locals then started a race riot and the government arrested thousands of immigrants to appease them... Ypsilon (talk) 20:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
- Makes sense. I think it may boil down to that warnings are unnecessary, and we hope that not approaching those people with bats and NRM flags in a dark alley at pub clothing times is common sense (which we often recommend using). In the rural communities people might be staring, but they will not go to fetch a bat and getting stares is not something we need to warn about. --LPfi (talk) 20:10, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Espoo and Vantaa not included in Helsinki
Please correct your list of cities: both Espoo and Vantaa are independent towns and larger than any of the following ones on your listing. I would also suggest a change of the title: there is only one city in Finland. —The preceding comment was added by Paj (talk • contribs)
- Paj, you can change this yourself. Why don't you do so if no-one expresses any opposition within the next 2 days? Also, when you post to talk pages, please sign by typing 4 tildes (~) in a row at the end of each post. Welcome to Wikivoyage! I'll post a welcome message with some useful links on your user talk page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:08, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
- It's true that Espoo and Vantaa are separate cities; the notion probably is a leftover from the time when our Helsinki article wasn't districtified. But the likely reason for why they were put there in the first place is that the whole Capital Region from a traveler's point of view is one single city. I think we could just remove the references to Espoo and Vantaa.
- To your other points, since when has there been only one city (kaupunki) in Finland? Yes, there is only one "metropolitan area" (defined as having a million inhabitants and more), and this is Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa (and tiny Kauniainen) combined, Helsinki proper has about 650,000 inhabitants. As a side note, they're not all individually larger than any other city in Finland as Tampere is a more populous than Vantaa.
- Thirdly, on Wikivoyage we call all articles of places where people live "cities", while "other destinations" are for articles of national parks, particularly large theme parks and the like. --Ypsilon (talk) 15:25, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, both, for the info and comments. I quite see your point in choosing ”city”, but is it stated anywhere? Traditional usage guides comprehension strongly. I stand corrected when it comes to comparing the sizes of Tampere and Vantaa. Paj (talk) 12:14, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
- It's in Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy#Cities and Wikivoyage:Small city article template, and doubtless in other places, because the definition of "city" on this site is fundamental to Wikivoyage's system of "breadcrumb navigation", which is based on a hierarchy that typically has "cities" at the bottom (along with such recognized non-city destinations as parks and airports). We don't have separate templates or site terms for cities, towns, villages and hamlets, and if you think about it, if we did, we would be constantly engaging in useless, travel-irrelevant debates about whether Destination X is a city, town, village or whatever. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:04, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
- I deleted Espoo and Vantaa from the list as they're the same destination as Helsinki from a visitor's point of view, and we per 7 2 only allow a maximum of 9 cities in a list (except for the region right above cities, parks etc. in the hierarchy). Ypsilon (talk) 19:53, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
Finnish taxis
An IP user has been adding taxi information, mainly on two taxi apps, to a lot of Finnish city articles. I have no idea whether the IPv6 address is stable, so not relying on direct communication (I will put a link to here from the IP user talk).
I am not sure how to handle this. It is clear that the info should be added to Finland#By taxi instead of all these pages, if the companies are relevant country wide – but I have no idea of whether they are of any use outside some areas. The crucial question is whether some actual taxi driver in the vicinity can be reached with those apps, and I suppose you need local info to know. The company can claim coverage even if only a tiny percentage of drivers, usually having to drive a long distance to get to you, are connected.
The general problem has existed since the taxi reform: taxis and call centres are no more locally bound, and any company can claim as large an area of coverage as they want. I am not a frequent customer, so have little data from the ground.
--LPfi (talk) 11:02, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
- Perhaps the user registered: Vkem has made similar edits. Copying my talk page message. --LPfi (talk) 11:09, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
Price watch websites
I removed links to these sites from the article, as I don't think our External links policy allows them. They might be useful, however, for updating the article (watch out, though, for sampling bias).
--LPfi (talk) 09:30, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
National taxi services
There is a new trend of national taxi services appearing in Nordic countries. They have easy to use smartphone apps which make the order process clear, like Uber. They claim to have near-nationwide coverage or coverage of list of specific cities. What we should do regarding them? I think they would give additional advantage for Wikivoyage users compared to having only phone call numbers of local taxi companies, regarding that many Wikivoyage users do not have English as their first language, and may have trouble pronouncing local language street addresses. So should we include them if they say that they cover specific regions? --Vkem (talk) 00:43, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
- See Travellers' pub#National taxi services. I suggest we keep the discussion there, until it is down to national details. –LPfi (talk) 07:00, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
- Regarding national details, Taksit.fi search engine is official website of Taksiliitto (taxi association of Finland) and they have local taxi company contact details. So if we want to improve local taxi information of towns and municipalities, the info can be found from there. I would guess they would be realiable service because the official taxi association suggests to use them.
Covid box
@Ground Zero: I am sympathetic to trying to keep the box reasonably short, but I think the worst problem was some old baggage, which I didn't take the time to rewrite as restrictions are going to change in a few days, perhaps with more drastic changes in a week or two.
I think it was reasonable to mention from what kind of baseline the situation is deteriorating. From having had none or a few people in hospital we now have tens, not hundreds or thousands. "Quickly rising" should be put in that perspective. Incidence is now doubling every few weeks, but is still not worse than in most of Europe – and the rate could change any week, if the reactions are sufficient (in Vaasa, where incidence rose dramatically last week, students stopped all events and the universities on-campus lectures for two weeks).
Splitting the covid box in two, one in the lead, one in Get in, makes it more difficult to keep the information complete, up to date and coherent. Most edits will probably be in one of the places, doubling information and leaving some outdated information in either place. Skipping the box in the lead is not too difficult for the reader, and the information can be trimmed somewhat (I think that on travel restrictions is quite irrelevant at the moment, as they probably will be revised tomorrow, and some wording elsewhere was probably less than ideal).
I think I won't try to keep up with the news with the current setup, but please reword in a way that is still accurate after a month.
–LPfi (talk) 15:28, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
- (Sorry for the tone, I am quite irritable at the moment, for non-WV related reasons. I understand the edit was one to expect on a wiki, intended as good cooperation. –LPfi (talk) 15:35, 8 October 2020 (UTC))
I understand being irritable at the moment. The news day to day is depressing, especially if you have other things in your life to deal with.
I think not many people are travelling at the moment, but many may be reading Wikivoyage to plan for future trips, or to dream of a world in which travel is possible. That's why I think it is a mistake to fill the reader's screen up with COVID warnings and make them scroll down. I think that putting the entry restrictions under Get In makes sense, and if they are going to change frequently, then maybe it would be better to write them in a general way, and point readers to official sources for up-to-date info, rather than trying to keep up with the changes here. COVID information doesn't have to be at the top of the article -- it's not like anyone doesn't know that COVID is going on, or that COVID is unique to Finland.
If it makes sense to include stronger wording on the the extent of the problem in Finland now, then we should add something in. I just don't think that a week-by-week recounting of the situation is appropriate for a travel guide. Let's focus on the current situation. I hope that your non-WV issues go better. Regards, Ground Zero (talk) 18:36, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
- Few people travelling now makes sense. In fact even most domestic travel is recommended against right now. I hope the development will turn in a few weeks, otherwise we will get real problems. I cut it down radically now. Details can be reinserted if the situation improves. –LPfi (talk) 17:22, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- There are probably going to be outbreaks here and there with local restrictions on meetings, events and nightclubs and whatnot coming into effect (and ending?) quickly so I agree we should keep the box short unless something really dramatical happens. --Ypsilon (talk) 17:47, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- I hope the new restrictions and awakened awareness will get the R0 down, and the situation stabilizing. Outbreaks will come and go, but if they can be contained there will not be any need for unexpected measures. Then we can describe the range of possibilities and leave to the traveller to check the local situation. I sincerely hope Vaasa will succeed (many cases, but in specific groups, which can self-isolate), but I am really worried about Helsinki, where I don't see an easy way out. –LPfi (talk) 18:30, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- Personally I think the Vaasa outbreak will pan out just like the ones in Jyväskylä and Kuhmo, though of course one never knows. Thankfully corona seems to be a virus spreading through people being close together with an infected person for a period of time rather than just walking past an infected person on the street (with neither wearing masks?), so I'm myself not that worried about the situation here in Helsinki either, but again one never knows how this continues... Ypsilon (talk) 20:07, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- For Vaasa, yes, I think there is good hope. But in Helsinki, if people don't know how they got it, the symptomless ones will continue to spread it at work, on the metro and in the pubs. You'd have to close everything down for two weeks, and I cannot see how to do that in Helsinki. –LPfi (talk) 21:24, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- Or: close the borders and have people stay at home. :-( It was successful in the spring. I am not sure people are willing to do it again until the situation gets really serious. –LPfi (talk) 21:28, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- For Vaasa, yes, I think there is good hope. But in Helsinki, if people don't know how they got it, the symptomless ones will continue to spread it at work, on the metro and in the pubs. You'd have to close everything down for two weeks, and I cannot see how to do that in Helsinki. –LPfi (talk) 21:24, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- Personally I think the Vaasa outbreak will pan out just like the ones in Jyväskylä and Kuhmo, though of course one never knows. Thankfully corona seems to be a virus spreading through people being close together with an infected person for a period of time rather than just walking past an infected person on the street (with neither wearing masks?), so I'm myself not that worried about the situation here in Helsinki either, but again one never knows how this continues... Ypsilon (talk) 20:07, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
I've started a general discussion about what to do with COVID-19 boxes here: Template talk:COVID-19 box. This issue isn't unique to the Finland article. Ground Zero (talk) 21:44, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
Matkahuolto route planner
We should have some warning for the Matkahuolto route planner, but I don't know its limitations and biases. Its discription says:
- This service is provided by Matkahuolto for route planning in Finland. The service covers public transport, walking, cycling, and some private car use. Service is built on Digitransit platform.
In Swedish it has a caveat: "with some limitations" (not only regarding car use).
And when I search for connections from one railway station to another, I am advised to take a bus route with three transfers. Are long distance trains included at all?
The description says that "public transport routes and timetables are downloaded from Traficom's national public transit database". What modes of transport are available there? Are the long-distance trains absent from the database or just ignored?
–LPfi (talk) 14:01, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
- This one? Yes, there seems to be just bus, walking, bike and car as options; no trains at all. In addition it does just want to give one bus connection at a time when looking at some randomly picked routes. For example from Kouvola to Helsinki tomorrow, it gives you one trip with a transfer in Karhula, whereas liput.matkahuolto.fi gives you two direct routes. Clicking on the walking, cycling and driving icons doesn't yield any results. Overall I'd say that route planner isn't very useful.
- They do also have the icons for Helsinki region public transport (BTW this planner looks a lot like the former version of the Helsinki route planner), which isn't too useful when going from, say, Pori to Turku or Keuruu to Jyväskylä. (Just in Fingerpori the metro goes further :D). Ypsilon (talk) 15:49, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
- Ah! It was the HRT image I mistook for a train – I got some regional trains as part of the route, when searching for connections from Karis. –LPfi (talk) 16:24, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
- Nope, looks like they want to censor VR's long distance services for whatever reason, as even Karis to Åbo is by local train and bus via Helsinki. As said, not a very informative travel planner. --Ypsilon (talk) 17:59, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
- That was among my first tries, but Karis to Åbo is long-distance, while rather short as such :-) –LPfi (talk) 22:10, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
- The whatever reason may be simply that VR is their competitor, as are aeroplanes, which are also not suggested for a voyage to Lapland. I haven't tried to get them to suggest driving, but I'd not be surprised if they made some odd choices also for those with car. –LPfi (talk) 22:14, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
- It's in practice really just a bus planner with the capital region's public transport network added or vice versa. Ypsilon (talk) 13:25, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
Smartphone taxi apps
Question: What is the maximum number of times a taxi service can be added to an article? The answer is of course, one. But if you've been following up on User talk:Vkem#Finnish taxis, again, you'd have noticed that 02 Taksi is added to so many cities and towns. But for the matter, it is useful knowing where certain companies operate nationwide, but at the same time, it doesn't give a fair chance of local taxi companies and a traveller won't get a fair perspective if the same company is just listed the umpteenth time. If that was for all cities, Uber would be listed in about 15000 articles (that's hyperbole of course, but it would almost appear in every US and Australian article, as well as most of Europe). Ypsilon has suggested that it goes in the Finland article, and I also believe the same as well, but what does the broader community think? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:42, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
- I think that the app can be mentionned by name (with no link) in a city, but only have listing details at a country level (or state or county if that is where the regulations differ). So in a city we would have "Taxiapp1 and Taxiapp2 operate here", before the listings of the local companies. More can be said in city articles if we have on the ground knowledge of the different apps (number of drivers in a city etc) - "the one driver for Taziapp2 is often not online before 10:00". AlasdairW (talk) 20:39, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
- That could also work. Though the problem would be keeping all of them up to date (which is what we have right now). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:25, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
- I suppose Vkem has some half-automatic tools that make the checking and editing he does easy. As he does not communicate there are two problems: we don't know whether him not having updated the app sentences is because they don't need updating or because he just hasn't taken the time (and others not having the tools need to check manually), and we don't know the criteria for mentioning a taxi service in a specific article. The call centre companies (at least some of them) do state on their web pages in what municipalities they are active (and in what hours, not everywhere around the clock), but I don't know whether that means there is at least one car that claims to serve the municipality or whether they do so only when they have working coverage. Vkem has checked at least for some places that the service is usable, but I don't know whether the check was for one arbitrary voyage at one arbitrary time or something more thorough. –LPfi (talk) 06:20, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
- The common system in Finland is that drivers connected to a call centre can take or ignore (refuse?) a drive at will, but refusing more than sporadically may get them thrown out of the system. I don't know the specifics of the contracts and I don't know any driver in the countryside (and seldom use taxis) so I don't know how this works out in practice. I know that some types of drives are unattractive to drivers, and some drivers do try to avoid them. –LPfi (talk) 06:28, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
- I suppose Vkem has some half-automatic tools that make the checking and editing he does easy. As he does not communicate there are two problems: we don't know whether him not having updated the app sentences is because they don't need updating or because he just hasn't taken the time (and others not having the tools need to check manually), and we don't know the criteria for mentioning a taxi service in a specific article. The call centre companies (at least some of them) do state on their web pages in what municipalities they are active (and in what hours, not everywhere around the clock), but I don't know whether that means there is at least one car that claims to serve the municipality or whether they do so only when they have working coverage. Vkem has checked at least for some places that the service is usable, but I don't know whether the check was for one arbitrary voyage at one arbitrary time or something more thorough. –LPfi (talk) 06:20, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
- That could also work. Though the problem would be keeping all of them up to date (which is what we have right now). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:25, 12 July 2021 (UTC)