User talk:Superb Owl

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I love your user name. Ground Zero (talk) 00:33, 22 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi, @Superb Owl, I read your user page. If you want to suggest changes, you need to do so in the wv:Travellers' pub. And please do!

All the best,

Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:07, 28 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi @Ikan Kekek and thank you for the encouragement! I updated my user page and have posted my main suggestion at Wikivoyage Lounge on meta wiki for now: but any tips on where to take it are welcome. Superb Owl (talk) 00:28, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Unfortunately, I don't think many Wikivoyagers read Meta. I seldom do. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:53, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

That is good to know - I created a community wishlist wish for the dead link bot here and will post it to the travellers' pub shortly Superb Owl (talk) 01:38, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Some 2c about buying up Wikitravel: I think it's definitely possible, and I do think the company has devalued quite a lot over time (especially given how much they've fallen off a cliff with rankings), and the site seems to be a walking corpse (couldn't even create an account there last time I tried because their networks think I'm a bot), but I don't think the WMF will be too keen given how much they've seemed to be spending on cost-cutting. Dunno if IB would want to sell it to the WMF either, because from what I understand, they do still make a profit from Wikitravel (just with how many ads they dump on their site). btw these are just my thoughts; some interesting discussion points you have there that I def appreciate you for bringing up. :) //shb (t | c | m) 01:46, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

That is really helpful context and perspective - I will probably not focus much on advocating for that actively since it's something largely out of our control as editors, but would be nice! Superb Owl (talk) 02:51, 1 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

I agree with Ikan; the main place for change suggestions is the pub, though some might also go on the talk pages for various policies.

I'll comment here on one suggestion. You ask:

Why not link every bolded page name (in the lede of the article) to its Wikipedia article?

I like many of your suggestions, but my reaction to that one is a very firm 'no'. We want most links, especially those for place names, to point to the relevant article here on WV, not to anything external, not even WP.

I agree, though, that links to WP should be made more prominent. Perhaps require that the relevant link be given in the lede or the Understand section of each article? Add an "external links" section? Pashley (talk) 23:38, 6 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi User:Pashley, I agree that we want to point to WV over WP when that is the choice - the main concern I have is about pointing to external links over WP (or not pointing to WP from its corollary article on WV) Superb Owl (talk) 23:42, 6 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Pashley, you were around here when we used to have "External links" sections. Remember how they became such a magnet for spam and touting that we gave up spending time determining which ones were worthwhile and which were not and thereby prohibited such sections? Why do you want to restore them? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:13, 7 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

I do indeed remember that & would certainly prefer another way to make WP links more prominent. I suggested one above & there might be others.

However I do not think having a section (perhaps with another title? "Open knowledge links"?) clearly restricted to linking to other open source info (WP, OSM, ...) is entirely out of the question. Pashley (talk) 01:01, 7 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

In the Monobook skin, which was default when I started editing Wikipedia (later replaced by Vector and then the current Vector-2022), the sister project links were in the left margin, below the tools but above the language links, always visible. Add "?useskin=monobook" to a mainspace URL (a plain one for simplicity, such as …/wiki/Monaco?useskin=monobook) to see what it looks like.

The English-Wikipedia folks dominate, and for them the sister projects (and other language versions) are less important, so hiding away the links to be used only by power users kind of made sense.

Perhaps the sister project menu could be moved up as one of the always visible ones, such as by a setting that is on by default on Wikivoyage. Both Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons are relevant also for passers-by here.

–LPfi (talk) 10:51, 10 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the explanation. I'd wondered why the left-column links had gone away, but hadn't known.

As I see it, we should definitely make article-level WP links more prominent. Re-enabling them in the left column is not enough, but would be better than nothing. Pashley (talk) 12:52, 10 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Part of the reason I've never liked vector 2022 is exactly this. //shb (t | c | m) 12:57, 10 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

I don't know whether the sister project link can be moved to the "main menu", which is what left-margin menu there is, in Vector-2022. I think it would be easier to use the empty space between "Discussion" and "Read", perhaps having "In other projects" as an item before "* Watch" and the dots. I don't know to what extent there would be issues of principle or technical ones though. –LPfi (talk) 13:46, 10 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

That's really interesting context as to where it went. I actually like the simpler interface and think the 'in other projects' bar was overly busy and, outside of Wikipedia, rarely useful. Not sure bringing that back in some capacity will do much to address the lack of connectivity between the projects, unlike wikilinking or adding a prominent 'sister' template box to each page pointing at the Wikipedia corrollary (for example) Superb Owl (talk) 19:08, 10 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

A link to the relevant Commons category, in addition to one to Wikipedia, is really useful. I also think we should have easily clickable links for every article that has an analogue on those sister sites. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:35, 10 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Good call on Commons (I added a box (here) just to see how it looked). The other projects I would need some data on how often those projects actually getting clicked into and used to be convinced. Superb Owl (talk) 02:13, 11 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

We have a section such as Xiamen#Information_sources under Understand in many articles, listing tourist bureau or local government sites. I suggest such a section should be required, or at least strongly suggested, for every article in the geographic hierarchy & should include links to open source sites such as WP, Commons & OSM. I'd put a comment in the templates along the lines of:

This section should include links for only two types of site:

Official sites for tourist bureau and/or local government

Open source sites such as Wikipedia or Open Street Map

No commercial site of any type should be linked here.

Pashley (talk) 14:14, 12 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

That makes a lot of sense to me as a logical place to link to WP/Commons/OSM Superb Owl (talk) 15:08, 12 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

We could perhaps have a template that links to the two sites (and perhaps others that we find useful in general or in certain cases), using the wikidata association, to be placed at top of the Tourist information (or whatever it is called) subsection. I don't think we should recommend adding arbitrary open source sites (whatever it means in this context). We could add the subsection and the (Mediawiki) template to our article templates. –LPfi (talk) 16:24, 12 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi. I just made these edits. Wikivoyage-space articles (which have the "Wikivoyage:" syntax) have talk pages of "Wikivoyage talk:". Please make sure to put discussions or expressions of uncertainty on the talk page, with unusual exceptions like Wikivoyage:Requested articles. Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:31, 11 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure I understand why we can't admit uncertainty in these Wikivoyage namespace articles themselves? Superb Owl (talk) 23:20, 11 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

We don't want policy or guidelines pages to seem to contradict themselves. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:24, 12 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

Agreed - there was definitely a better way to phrase what I was trying to say Superb Owl (talk) 04:52, 12 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

It's also not really uncertain – Wikivoyage (and other WMF projects too) have been using OSM data for years because it is legally compliant. //shb (t • c) 02:39, 12 October 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'm just trying to clarify how we are allowed to use OSM data. I don't know what the licenses mean but have asked for some second opinions from people who know a lot about this subject Superb Owl (talk) 04:52, 12 October 2026 (UTC)Reply