Talk:Buffalo

Neighborhoods

Is there anybody here familiar with Buffalo neighborhoods? —The preceding comment was added by 64.252.7.134 (talk • contribs)

Not very, but I've heard of some of them. What do you need to know? (WT-en) LtPowers 21:23, 28 October 2011 (EDT)

It just seems like a city that could be expanded into districts. —The preceding comment was added by 64.148.1.164 (talk • contribs)

It could, but we would need a lot more information first. If we split it into districts now, they'd be mostly empty. (WT-en) LtPowers 14:13, 9 December 2011 (EST)

I am a resident of Buffalo who has been actively updating Buffalo's Wikivoyage page over the past few days. I believe I can be of assistance in this matter as local history and culture are two of my areas of study. --(WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 00:50, 11 December 2011 (EST)

Sounds good. I'm not terribly familiar with Buffalo (never been) but have family roots there and I am intrigued by it and its history. I wish I could help. —The preceding comment was added by 64.252.3.199 (talk • contribs)

Please sign your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Thanks! (WT-en) LtPowers 20:10, 16 December 2011 (EST)

I wonder if someone could offer some suggestions on editing the Eat section such that the MOS warning box can be removed. (Or if, perhaps, the issue has been fixed and the warning can be removed.) (WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 00:14, 28 January 2012 (EST)

I think it's safe to remove the style tag, particularly since no reason was provided for its inclusion. The list of restaurants is longer than is normal, and doesn't fit the standard "Budget", "Mid-range", "Splurge" breakdown, but neither of those are hard rules. That said, this article is getting long enough that some thought should be given to splitting it into districts - I don't know Buffalo at all, but the district-ification process typically involves someone with local knowledge providing a proposed division. That division should cover the entire city and have clear borders so that it would be easy to determine what goes where, and as long as there aren't concerns about the proposal then a break-up of the article into smaller pieces could then begin after a few days or weeks. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:54, 28 January 2012 (EST)

Certainly the Eat and Drink sections are getting quite lengthy, but the other sections are just about right for a Big City, especially if we were to move suburban listings to other articles. I'd be worried that districtification would dilute the See/Do/Buy/Sleep content too much. (WT-en) LtPowers 16:27, 28 January 2012 (EST)

I'd like to see the article district-ified at some point, especially since in my edits to the article, I have found myself compelled to omit minor information for the purposes of keeping things as short and succinct as possible. I feel I have the local knowledge available to get that process started. I also plan to break down the restaurant listings into budget/mid-range/splurge at some point. My apologies - I'm kind of "learning as I go" here. Hopefully I haven't made any huge mistakes. I will go ahead and remove the style tag now, with your blessing. (WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 20:25, 28 January 2012 (EST)

Proposal for dividing Buffalo article into districts

At right is my proposal for dividing the Buffalo, New York article into districts in accordance with the Huge City template. The image is based on an August 2009 Buffalo Rising article "Buffalo Neighborhoods: What Defines Them?" [1] with additions and alterations by me. I feel that each of these eight districts are the proper size to ensure the emergence of individual district articles that are robust without being overlong.

I eagerly await any suggestions or comments my fellow travellers may have.

(WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 01:32, 12 February 2012 (EST)

Without knowing more about Buffalo the proposal seems reasonable. The only concern I would have is whether it makes sense to have eight districts for a city of this size - would it be better to (for example) combine Allentown, Delaware and Elmwood for now, and re-consider splitting things up further in the future if necessary? -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 13:25, 12 February 2012 (EST)

If Allentown, Delaware and Elmwood were combined into a single article, it would easily be longer than all the other articles combined. For me, it might make more sense to combine some of the geographically larger districts that are mainly residential areas, but there's not a whole lot that (for example) the East Side and South Buffalo have in common with each other. As I alluded to above, there are many minor attractions and details that I omitted for the sake of brevity before it was suggested to me that the article might be divided. I am confident that there will be enough detail that I can add to fill out each of the articles. :) (WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 13:42, 12 February 2012 (EST)

Based on how fast this article has developed lately I'm fine with this proposal. I'd suggest giving it at least 5-7 days for further discussion before beginning any implementation as others may have suggestions or concerns, but for my part I think your approach sounds reasonable. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 13:57, 12 February 2012 (EST)

I rarely venture inside the 190-290-90 loop myself, so I can't do much to back this up, but I also fear that the Elmwood, Delaware, and Allentown neighborhoods are too small for full district articles. Obviously, each has their own distinct character and probably a miles-long list of bars and cafes that locals swear by, but I'm worried that the granularity will be just a bit too fine for the average traveler. The neighborhoods, from what I can gather, strike me as analogous to the Park Ave/East Ave/Neighborhood of the Arts areas of Rochester, and I can't imagine making full district articles out of each of those. For a city the size of Buffalo, a division of five or six districts strikes me as more manageable for the traveler. If these three neighborhoods were discontiguous, I wouldn't argue, but since they're all adjacent to each other, they might work better as a single district... at least for now. (You may be interested in the discussion at Talk:Brooklyn#Districts, where the value of combining adjacent distinct neighborhoods into a single article is discussed.) (WT-en) LtPowers 14:45, 12 February 2012 (EST)

I understand your argument, (WT-en) LtPowers, and am inclined to agree in certain ways. I am quite sure that given the broad range of attractions in the Elmwood Village (i.e. the Museum District), a separate Elmwood district article could stand on its own as a well-rounded one, rather than merely a list of bars and restaurants. I am not 100% sure that the same could be said about Allentown and the Delaware Avenue district, but I nonetheless suspect that, if care is taken, there should be no problem with those either. I might be inclined to combine Allentown and Delaware into one district while leaving Elmwood separate, but the problem with that is these two neighborhoods are actually fairly dissimilar - Allentown is a loud, hip, youthful neighborhood dominated by restaurants and bars, where Delaware Avenue is a quiet, aristocratic residential district with impressive historic architecture, but not much in the way of nightlife. I have an idea: what if I drafted individual district articles for Allentown, Delaware, and the Elmwood Village as well as one for all three of them together as one, and presented each on the Talk page where we could compare them and hopefully come to a consensus? (WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 16:21, 12 February 2012 (EST)

Sometimes it makes sense to combine two neighborhoods into one district article, simply because they are adjacent, don't fit into other district articles, and cannot support a good article on their own. Some good examples of "two hoods, one district" that really just put the neighborhoods side by side:

• San Francisco/Chinatown-North Beach
• London/Holborn-Clerkenwell
• Brooklyn/Bedford-Stuyvesant and Flatbush

I have written several of such articles, but usually try to find some way to unite them in the lede (e.g., Chicago/Bridgeport-Chinatown and Washington, D.C./Adams Morgan-Columbia Heights).

I don't know enough to comment on the particulars of the district boundaries, but the article is clearly ready for districting. I can comment on roughly how many districts it ideally would have, though, based on Wikivoyage_talk:Geographical_hierarchy#Optimal_districts_schemes, and it looks like this might be a little much. The content/districts is actually pretty acceptable at 33,300 (6 articles, by combining the three as suggested above, would be an even better 44,400), but 8 districts for an American city of 200,000 would be unusual. Maybe the best comparison would be with Baltimore, which is a little more than twice the size and three times the population of Buffalo. It has 9 districts, but I would say its ideal number would actually be 8 (if it were possible to do so with a sensible breakdown). This is all just metrics, though—each city will have its own needs.

City	Total bytes	Districts	Other articles	Population	Land area	Bytes/district
Buffalo	266,384	8	0	.2 mil	105 km²	33,300

The last of poorly organized thoughts: looking at what has already been broken down, it definitely seems that Delaware District shouldn't get its own article, at least until there is much more content for it. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:26, 13 February 2012 (EST)

Thank you, (WT-en) Peter - I think I understand better now. Given my aforementioned comments about the Elmwood Village's wealth of attractions and my concerns about the length of the full Elmwood/Delaware/Allentown article, and given your comments, would it be an acceptable course of action to combine Delaware and Allentown into their own article while keeping Elmwood a separate one, as I suggested above, for a total of 7 districts? (WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 00:54, 14 February 2012 (EST)

That sounds reasonable to me. If you have the gung ho energy in you, I would encourage you to go ahead. Strike while the iron's hot! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 22:59, 15 February 2012 (EST)

Excellent. I have revised the map I created and linked to above to reflect the seven-district schema. I will wait two to three days before proceeding further, in order to allow for any final concerns or other bits of input. (WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 09:44, 16 February 2012 (EST)

How much content is there in the North and West districts? Any point in trying to combine them? (Just throwing out an idea.) Also, have you given consideration to adding a selection of photos to the article? Buffalo has long been in need of a quality lead photo, for instance, and it'd be awesome of each of the districts could start life with a good photo at the top. (WT-en) LtPowers 20:29, 16 February 2012 (EST)

I'm quite sure that both of those articles will stand on their own quite well, especially North Buffalo. North Buffalo has Hertel Avenue, Parkside, University Heights, the Zoo, and the Parkside Lodge. The West Side has the Buffalo Religious Arts Center, riverfront parks, a few B&Bs, shopping along Grant Street, and some architectural stuff that I haven't gotten around to yet. In the district articles, I plan to elaborate greatly on the Architecture section of the current article - perhaps something like itineraries for self-guided walks down Delaware Avenue or through Parkside.

Funny that you should mention photographs, as I am an amateur photographer whose work focuses on local architecture and urban scenes. I did not open my Wikivoyage Shared account until I uploaded the districtification proposal map, so I fully plan on including some of those.

(WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 23:52, 16 February 2012 (EST)

Reversion question

Swept in from the pub

I've had to revert this edit three times already, and so I'm reluctant to do so again, but I can't figure out why this is being removed. Any thoughts? (WT-en) LtPowers 19:06, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

It's not clear why the original text is being removed, so provided the info isn't incorrect then your revert seems fine. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 20:35, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

The user in question left a note on my talk page explaining the deletion. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 21:53, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

Odd that he did so for you but not for me. The explanation is also unsatisfying, for reasons I explained on your talk page. (WT-en) LtPowers 09:06, 17 September 2011 (EDT)

N.B.: The user's explanation can be found at User talk:Wrh2/Archive 2011#Buffalo Eats Deletion Explained. LtPowers (talk) 02:16, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Captions

Several of the images here have very long captions describing attractions not listed elsewhere in the article. The long descriptions make the formatting weird, and this is not how we usually do it. These need to be described in a listing instead, with just a short caption for the image. (WT-en) texugo 18:20, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

I will shorten some of the captions when I am able, but frankly I am not sure what you mean when you say that some of the images describe attractions that are not listed in the article. I have looked over all the images I have added and, unless I am seriously missing something, they all describe attractions that are listed. (WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 13:12, 18 June 2012 (EDT)

"Western New York"

The article uses the phrase "Western New York" a few times but fails to define it. In most cases, that's fine, but there are a couple of instances where it may be misleading.

As stated on the Western New York disambiguation page, the term is ambiguous. To quote myself: "In Buffalo and its immediate surrounding areas, the term encompasses only the westernmost eight counties of New York. As you go farther east, though, the definition generally expands accordingly. Rochester, for example, is usually considered to be part of Western New York everywhere except in Buffalo. At the extreme, some residents include Syracuse in the area, although it's more often considered part of Central New York."

As I said, this is not a problem for most of the term's uses in this article. However...

1. The listing for the Buffalo Zoo claims it as the second-most popular tourist attraction in WNY. This is only true if Rochester is excluded from the definition, as The Strong's National Museum of Play hosts over half a million visitors a year compared to the zoo's 400,000.
2. The Buffalo Greek Fest is claimed to kick off the summer festival season in WNY, but the Lilac Festival in Rochester is even earlier and serves the same purpose in the Rochester area.
3. The Robeson Theater is claimed as the oldest African-American theater in WNY. That claim comes from the theater itself, so it's understandable to use it here -- but it's confusing to readers who don't know what definition of WNY is being used.
4. The Theatre of Youth is supposedly the only theater company in WNY devoted to kids' theater, but again, this is only true if you exclude Rochester.

I'm not looking for this article to include a detailed discussion of the term's ambiguity, but I wanted to point out a few cases where the ambiguity may be problematic. Let me know if I'm way off base here.

-- (WT-en) LtPowers 08:12, 25 July 2012 (EDT)

The definition of "Western New York" as used in my contributions does indeed correspond to the eight counties mentioned in the disambiguation article, and excludes Rochester, being the western extremity of the Finger Lakes and as such distinct from WNY as far as my writing is concerned. As you mentioned, this is the dominant understanding of the definition of "Western New York" among Buffalo residents — so much so that the fact that this is not THE dominant definition among all New Yorkers actually comes as something of a surprise to me.

This is an interesting issue you've brought up. I think it might be good to address it briefly in the article itself, and would be open to suggestions as to how to do so in a way that is comprehensive enough to allay any confusion that might crop up, yet not end up being a long and distracting tangent.

I noticed that the eight counties defined as "Western New York" in the Buffalo article correspond to the combined "Greater Niagara Region" and "Chautauqua-Allegany Region" as defined by New York State's official tourism website [2]. Though these terms (especially the former one) are arguably even less well-defined in common usage than "Western New York", perhaps the facts that 1) the New York State government is about as authoritative a source as you can find on this subject, and 2) NYS does have clear definitions for "Greater Niagara Region" and "Chautauqua-Allegany Region", are enough to make a reoriention of those references around New York State's terminology preferable to continuing to deal with the ambiguity of "Western New York".

-- (WT-en) AndreCarrotflower 01:15, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

Yeah, around here the term means pretty much everything that's south of Lake Ontario (or west of I-81, roughly) -- that is, the western "arm" of the state's outline. I've long been aware of Buffalonians' more limited definition, though I hadn't been aware that they're unaware of the more expansive definition. (Does that make sense?)

wikipedia:Talk:Western New York has some extensive discussion, including this from me: "The definition seems to always include the westernmost eight counties, though definitions that are limited to those counties (primarily the tourism definition) seem to come about because of the lack of a better term for the eight-county area (that is, they defined the area first, then named it, rather than the other way around)." So I sympathize with the problem of defining the area without using the ambiguous term to refer to it. (And I don't have any brilliant suggestions, either; the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metro only includes Niagara and Erie counties, so we can't use that.)

In my own writing here on Wikivoyage, I've used (admittedly) somewhat awkward constructions explicitly to avoid using the ambiguous proper noun, like "the westernmost part of New York" or "the Niagara Frontier".

-- (WT-en) LtPowers 12:01, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

Talk

Hey Andre, just wanted to point out that your use of 'adequate for conversation' is easily read as insulting toward the hispanic population in Buffalo. Since there are a number of groups living in the area such as Burmese, Somalian, Sudanese, Arab, and Persian and you don't specify their familiarity with English, or that they exist, it seems odd to say this about the Hispanics. Certainly you don't mention that the Germans in Kaisertown, where many speak German, also speak English adequately.

-- 71.126.2.38 (talk) 17:31, 16 January 2013‎ (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback!

Here at Wikivoyage, one of our guiding mottos is "the traveller comes first". The traveller, in this case, being an Anglophone visitor to the West Side who wants to know how easy it is to speak with West Side residents who may be Hispanic. Given that, it's my opinion that "adequate for conversation" is appropriate verbiage; it addresses the traveller's needs.

The language proficiency of the immigrant communities (whose existence is indeed mentioned; see the "Buy" section) was not discussed on "Talk" because, though they are growing, for the time being they are handily outnumbered by the Hispanics. Thus, a visitor to the West Side is far more likely to speak with someone whose first language is Spanish than any of the other individual languages. Again, the traveller comes first (and this article is long enough as it is; one of the reasons for the districting process that's already begun).

As mentioned later on in the "Talk" section, most of the third- and fourth-generation German-Americans in a place like Kaisertown, "with the exception of a few elderly individuals" as the article states, have effectively no knowledge of their ancestral language. In my thirty-two years as a resident of Buffalo I've never spoken German with anyone from Kaisertown (which, these days, is as much Polish as German anyway).

I would love to hear your suggestions for alternate ways to deal with these issues, so let's talk about it here on the talk page, come to a consensus, and edit the article accordingly. In the meantime, though, please don't edit war.

Also, please remember to sign your comments on the talk page.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:47, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Alright, how about 'speak both English and Spanish conversationally.' That takes out the 'at least' and 'adequately' part, which feels demeaning, and maintains the traveler-centric view. So: Though the West Side is well-known as the home of the city's Hispanic community (mainly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans), Buffalo's Latinos are able to speak English and Spanish conversationally.

-- 71.126.2.38 (talk) 18:04, 16 January 2013‎ (UTC)

I personally think "English as well as Spanish" flows better, as it acknowledges the fact that any reader of the English-language Wikivoyage is going to care more whether they can speak English with a West Side resident than if they can speak Spanish. I tend to get persnickety about issues of diction and flow, so I'm not going to push that too hard. Also, I think the immigrant communities around Grant-Ferry do merit a mention in "Talk", collectively if not individually, so let's throw that in too.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:10, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Though the West Side is well-known as the home of the city's Hispanic community (mainly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans), Buffalo's Latinos are able to speak English as well as Spanish conversationally.

The languages I'm familiar with being spoken in the west side are Arabic, Vietnamese, Burmese, and occasionally Taiwanese.

-- 71.126.2.38 (talk) 18:17, 16 January 2013‎ (UTC)

Thanks, that's actually an excellent bit of information that should be incorporated into the article. I speak English, Spanish and French fluently, but I don't know that I'd have been able to identify Arabic, Vietnamese, Burmese or Taiwanese by ear.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:24, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I work in a school on the West Side so we see a lot of the children of people relocated as refugees by groups like Journey's End and the city is now the largest recipient of immigrants in the state http://www.wkbw.com/news/local/New-Immigrants--Refugees-Coming-to-Buffalo-180251221.html I'm sure there are other languages I'm missing.

-- 71.126.2.38 (talk) 18:50, 16 January 2013‎ (UTC)

Length and need for some sections

Hi, Andre, and everyone else. I know I added another photo, which you deleted for a valid reason, but this is a very long and content-filled article. Some of the length will be decreased when content is eventually moved to district articles, I imagine, but I would like you to talk about why you think it's important to include lists and descriptions of all the radio and TV stations. Most articles don't have that, and I question how important it really is for the traveler. I know that if I'm in another city with a radio, I just surf the FM and AM bands until I find something I like, and if I have a TV, I probably have a pretty wide choice of cable channels and would probably be more likely to watch CBC than any local station most of the time, anyway. It seems to me, if we want to list media in "Cope," perhaps we should restrict ourselves to listing purely or mostly informational media, through which visitors could find out about events that might interest them. Of course I'd hate for any part of your great work to go to waste, but let's remember that we aren't supposed to be writing a Yellow Pages here, as per goals. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:00, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Your point is well taken, Ikan Kekek.

I based the radio and TV section partly on LtPowers' work on Rochester. Obviously the radio section in that article there looks somewhat different than Buffalo's, as he groups the stations by genre instead of listing them individually. I do understand that this part of the Buffalo article is very lengthy, and I'm definitely not married to it as it is now, but I would like to find a way to incorporate some of the factoids I wrote about some of the stations (WGRF and WXRL, for example, off the top of my head) that serve as a window into local culture as much as anything else.

I'd like to keep the TV section the way it is, only because I know that many people, especially from other parts of the USA, will want to know where to find their favorite network TV shows while out of town.

I think it was AHeneen, on the DotM nominees page, who wondered whether Buffalo's radio and television listings would work better as a table. In my opinion, that might be the best answer. Would you agree? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:24, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I knew you'd blame me.  ;) It's possible that the TV and radio listings might work better in a larger article; in this case, Niagara Frontier fits well with the Buffalo-NF media market. (Not perfectly, though.) It's something to ponder. LtPowers (talk) 20:19, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd have to see the table to be sure, but it does sound like something I'd like better, especially if it's a bit smaller. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:26, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

It was my understanding from what AHeneen said - and I may very well be mistaken - that there's not a specific template for tables for radio/TV station listings. I, too, would be curious to see what one would look like, but it should be emphasized that at the end of the day, I'm a prose guy - sentences, paragraphs, clever turns of phrase. My handiness with formatting on MediaWiki is at a decidedly beginner level (just look how often I have to correct myself when archiving a previous DotM, for example).

To tell the truth, after mulling it over for a while I'm leaning toward continuing to follow LtPowers' example and grouping the stations by genre. It would still be a bit on the encyclopedic side, but it wouldn't look as unwieldy and off-putting as it does currently. I suspect that may be enough, given the fact that the Buffalo article will be substantially shorter once the districting is complete.

The only downside is the question of how to incorporate into such a model the factoids that I mentioned wanting to retain. I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 08:22, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Marineland

Marineland Niagara continues to get very negative (and damning) press from the Toronto Star, one of the big-three daily newspapers in the region. [3] This has been going on for about half a year now, reports of animals injured due to unhealthy conditions, ongoing burial of dead animals (possibly unlawfully) on the property, repeated protests but seemingly nothing much being done about the problems. Is it time to start removing listings from this place from every page except Niagara Falls (Ontario) itself per Wikivoyage:Avoid negative reviews? The park is closed for the season and bad news and damning allegations are still spilling out - the latest being that its owner killed two of a neighbour's dogs and buried them on Marineland property. It doesn't look like this is going away somehow. K7L (talk) 14:15, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I've heard reports about Marineland from time to time, and have always taken them with a grain of salt to say the least. In my experience, extreme animal-rights activists love to hurl loud, often unfounded or wildly exaggerated accusations of abuse at tourist attractions that "exploit" animals (defined loosely)—whether it be Marineland or Sea World or Busch Gardens or whatever else. In Buffalo at least, the prevailing opinion among the general public seems to be much the same as mine—the place seems to have no more trouble than usual selling tickets locally, the commercials still run endlessly every summer, and despite the occasional local news coverage, the situation at Marineland isn't a frequent topic of water-cooler conversation here by any means. Given all that, I think that until we have some hard evidence to back the allegations up, it should be innocent until proven guilty. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:06, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

What? But "Everyone loves Marineland!" LtPowers (talk) 21:37, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Looks like the singer on that jingle, Suzie McNeil, is trying to distance herself from the park. [4] As for evidence, these aren't animal rights activists but multiple insiders (mostly former trainers who have left the park) who have corroborated the claims, which have received multiple pages of coverage in the big Toronto dailies (Torstar in particular). I wouldn't expect extensive coverage in the Buffalo Evening News as it's a different country. Try http://www.google.ca/search?tbm=nws&q=Marineland K7L (talk) 21:59, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

It still looks like it's a bit he-said-they-said at this point. I agree with Andre that it's too soon to be excising the listing en masse. LtPowers (talk) 03:29, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, until we can better distinguish fact from fiction I think it would be premature to delete the listing outright. But I wonder if there's some way to delicately (and briefly) address the controversy in the listing itself, such that travelers can make their own ethical choice, without running afoul of anr.

Incidentally, speaking to K7L's comment above: the coverage of the Marineland controversy in the Buffalo News has indeed been extensive; the point I was trying to make is that the coverage has been met mostly with indifference here. Anyway, despite the fact that everyone here can recite the "Everyone Loves Marineland" jingle by heart, because of the tediousness of crossing the border, even before the controversy began Marineland was never much of a draw in Buffalo compared to Darien Lake (or even Martin's Fantasy Island). --AndreCarrotflower (talk) 09:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Where can I stick it?

Swept in from the pub

There's a really nice combination ice cream parlor/café that I'd like to list in the Elmwood Village district article. Would this be better under "Eat" or "Buy#Specialty foods"? Wikivoyage:Where you can stick it was no help in the matter.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 07:06, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Eat, unless it's a place where you can only buy boxes of ice cream to put in your freezer. --Peter ^Talk 07:39, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks for clearing that up. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 08:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Punctuation and other style issues

I don't quite understand this edit, as all of its changes seem to revert proper style to improper style (dashes to hyphens, "May 24" to "May 24th"). Am I missing something? LtPowers (talk) 00:06, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

To be fair, I didn't merely revert all the changes the bot made. In fact, I only reverted nine of them, far fewer than half. But what's important to remember is that our manual of style is not holy writ, some inviolable decree from the gods cast in stone. To quote from it: "Our manual of style is a collection of rules of thumb and guidelines for giving Wikivoyage a consistent look and feel. Most of these rules have exceptions..." (emphasis mine).

To address each of the reversions I made one by one:

"Louise Blanchard Béthune" → "Louise Blanchard Bethune": Quite simply, it is an incontrovertible fact that the surname of the architect in question doesn't contain any accent marks. This is exactly what I meant by my admittedly curtly worded edit summary: "if you're going to make such changes in future please do so manually, not with a bot. it was a pain in the ass going through and selectively reverting the erroneous ones. thank you."

"May 24 of each year" → "May 24th of each year": Read the words aloud: "may twenty-four of each year" just sounds off. The improvement in the flow of the prose that the "th" adds, in my opinion, far outweighs whatever microscopic benefit we may derive from all the dates on every page in Wikivoyage being written in cardinal rather than ordinal numbers. Consistency is great and to be striven for up to a certain point, but when we begin considering consistency per se more important than the individual circumstances of each article, the quality of our product starts to suffer.

"newly remodeled" → "newly-remodeled"; "well known" → "well-known": What is controversial about this? The reversion was of a grammatically incorrect phrase edited by a bot to a grammatically correct one edited by a human, and mos doesn't say anything about omitting hyphens in hyphenated words.

"30–60 minutes" → "30-60 minutes"; "June–August" → "June-August"; "June–July" → "June-July"; "September–October" → "September-October"; "10–15 minutes" → "10-15 minutes" - I realize I'm fighting an uphill battle on this one, but notwithstanding the fact that the mos explicitly says that it's to be done this way, nowhere outside Wikivoyage and Wikipedia have I ever seen en dashes used that way. I see it on Wikipedia frequently and it puts me off every time. What is it about the hyphen that gives the WMF such an unnatural revulsion?

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:29, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree.

With regard to the en-dash, this is a bit akin to the requirements for wv:aou and I would favour deliberately lowering the bar for new editors so that their first experience of editing does not result in (what may seem to them) inexplicable reverts or corrections. I will put some proposals forward at the MoS discussion pages regarding simplicity, consistency and editor choice and judgement. --118.93nzp (talk) 21:39, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Ah, AWB must have taken "Bethune" to be the city in France. (However, I should point out that I believe AWB operates only with human confirmation, not as an autonomous bot, so in theory Marek69 did specifically approve the change.) As for the dates, although pronounced as ordinals, dates in "Month xx" format are written as cardinals. "The 24th of May" would be correct, but "May 24". For the hyphens, "newly" and "well" are adverbs modifying the adjectives "remodeled" and "known" respectively; if they were compound adjectives they would take a hyphen, but as simple adverbial phrases, they do not. The dash is used in virtually all professional publishing applications, I assure you; if you have not noticed it, it is only because the dash is so natural that its presence is unremarkable. Wikipedia has this quite correct: dashes are used to separate ranges of items. The use of the hyphen in those contexts is nothing but an artifact of the typewriter age. I can provide sources if you need it. LtPowers (talk) 14:46, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're wrong at the moment, Powers.

Preferred style is currently the dd mmm yyyy format and order, shortened to dd mmm where the year is not relevant. However, abbreviations do not have to be used in body text or prose (as opposed to listings) and AndreCarrotflower has given an entirely justifiable reason for exercising editor choice and judgement in this particular case. If a lot of editors with different stylistic choices regarding dates in prose suddenly descend on this article, then a consistent style may need to be decided upon. Until that happens, AndreCarrotflower seems to have done an excellent job here. --118.93nzp (talk) 21:39, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Wrong about what? Nothing you said seems to have any bearing on what this discussion is about. LtPowers (talk) 20:46, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

For what it is worth, I've worked as a copy editor at times and am often a stickler on grammatical issues. I agree with Andre on every point above, except for the hyphen/n-dash debate which I do not think matters; I'd use a hyphen myself but do not object to the more pedantic usage. Certainly I would not waste time "correcting" it. Pashley (talk) 00:58, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

A hyphen is plainly and completely incorrect for indicating ranges when an endash is available. I can't believe there's even any debate about this. Powers ^(talk) 01:15, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Delaware Park / Buffalo Zoo

It's not clear from the map which district Delaware Park is in; is there any way to make that clearer? The listing for the Park is in Buffalo/Allentown and the Delaware District but the listing for the Zoo is in Buffalo/North Buffalo, and the two don't link to each other. Is there any way to clarify this for the reader? LtPowers (talk) 12:47, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

This was actually one of the major problems I had when I first devised the districting scheme, mostly because the big green blob on the map that is Delaware Park and Forest Lawn Cemetery is not so much in any one neighborhood as it is a transition zone between neighborhoods; a no-man's-land if you will. The ideal solution would have been to turn them into their own district à la Manhattan/Central Park - but Central Park, much like NYC itself, is truly a sui generis. I highly doubt there's enough of interest in Delaware Park and Forest Lawn to fill out an entire district article.

What I ended up doing was a bit complicated. I guess the best answer to your question, LtPowers, is that both Forest Lawn and Delaware Park ought to be considered part of the Delaware District, and indeed all the information about both park and cemetery can be found in that article. However, most of the amenities in Delaware Park that are located near Lincoln Parkway - the Rose Garden, the Japanese Garden, Shakespeare Hill, Hoyt Lake - are regarded by locals as an integral part of the Museum District, which is part of the Elmwood Village. So I double-listed all those features of the park in Buffalo/Elmwood Village. Policy frowns on that, but I feel this is the exception that proves the rule. It would make absolutely no sense to have the Albright-Knox and the Buffalo History Museum in one article, and the Rose Garden and Shakespeare in Delaware Park in another.

Similarly, the Meadow is considered an integral part of North Buffalo, so the golf course, Meadow Drive, the Parkside Lodge etc. are double-listed in Buffalo/North Buffalo for the same reason as above. In the article, I treat the Buffalo Zoo as an entirely separate entity from Delaware Park - they're adjacent to each other and the article says as much, but I don't think the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy is responsible for the Zoo, and no one would ever describe the Zoo as being in any neighborhood other than Parkside - so it's listed exclusively in North Buffalo.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:05, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

(To be clear: Forest Lawn Cemetery is the square-ish portion of the green blob south of NY 198 and east of Delaware Avenue; Delaware Park is the irregularly dumbbell-shaped remainder.) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm grasping at straws a bit here, but I don't think there's any reason we can't split the park among multiple districts. Put the Lincoln Parkway area in Elmwood Village, put the zoo in North Buffalo, and put the rest of the park and the cemetery in the Delaware District. Would that work? They could all be under a "Delaware Park" heading in each of the districts, perhaps. (On a related note, I'm wondering if we really need to highlight all of the park areas on the Buffalo overview map. They make it hard to find the borders between districts, and showing them (except perhaps for the one under discussion) doesn't hold much value for a reader looking at the district divisions. LtPowers (talk) 13:39, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Buffalo 2.0

Swept in from the pub

Three of the seven district articles have yet to be completed, but I'm pretty proud of the progress I've made, if I do say so myself. Thanks again to Peter for the district map he whipped up for a me a long time ago.

Onward and upward.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:44, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Looks great! Very detailed. How about a few more pictures in some the Eat sections and places where large amount of text can be uninviting? Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:00, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The map has a very good choice of colours for the various districts and I was a bit surprised to find out about the gambling possibilities in Buffalo. I like our guide to feature more quirky and esoteric stuff in addition to the well-trodden tourist "sights". Well done, André! --W. Frank^email_talk 12:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, good work so far.

However, I got here by looking at Special:WantedPages and finding that Buffalo/East Side had 8 links but no article. When I went to create a stub, I found it had already been created, deleted, protected, ... OK, I am leaving it alone & that's fine. There's no real article yet & that's fine too.

But could someone who knows the area consider creating at least stubs for the three missing districts? That would get rid of red links on the main page and get them off the wanted list. Pashley (talk) 00:46, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Excellent job at Buffalo/West Side! Pashley (talk) 19:56, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Pashley. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:00, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Stone Butch Blues

Is the LGBT book w:Stone Butch Blues worth a brief mention, as being set primarily in Buffalo in the pre-Stonewall riot 1960's? K7L (talk) 17:35, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't know, but I'm leaning toward "probably not".

First off, an argument can't really be made that the book figures prominently into local culture in general. It's not well-known by Buffalonians; I've lived there for all of my 33 years, and I've never heard of it myself. If, on the other hand, Stone Butch Blues would rank highly on a listing of seminal works of LGBT literature, I would definitely hear out any argument in favor of its inclusion, but my level of expertise on the subject is decidedly not high enough to judge whether it should be mentioned on that basis.

It strikes me that in the "Watch" subsection, there's a listing of popular movies set in Buffalo. That was not my idea; it's one of the few features of the article that predates my stewardship of it (though I did expand that section in the ensuing time period). Nonetheless, it might be worthwhile to include a similar short listing of books that are set in Buffalo. I'd love to hear some feedback on whether that would make the already flabby "Understand" section too long (alternatively, should the list of movies be excised for the sake of brevity?).

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Outdated accolades?

"Other titles bestowed on Buffalo in recent years include a placement among the "44 Places to Visit in 2009" by the New York Times --118.93nzp (talk) 21:42, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Finally!

Swept in from the pub

I'd been waiting for months for the snow to go away so that I could photograph the new pagebanner I'd had in mind for Buffalo. Today I finally did, and I could not be happier with the results. So I can't resist blowing my own horn here at the Pub about it. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:45, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations! It's a great photo. Edge3 (talk) 00:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Nice! Jjtkk (talk) 14:03, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Pagebanner

Are we sure the current pagebanner is better than the previous one? It shows the industrial side of Buffalo and none of its nice architecture. I think I'd like to revive the previous pagebanner. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:41, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Buffalo has moved from shying away from its industrial past to embracing it, which I tried to reflect in my text. The area in the foreground of the photo (the Outer Harbor) is actually redeveloping pretty rapidly, with the grain elevators being repurposed as art installations and for other uses, and bike trails and parkland installed along the streets and lakeshore (q.v. the old-fashioned streetlights along Ohio Street at left). To me, the photo is a great mixture of the past and the future. Plus, I think it's spectacular from a purely aesthetic POV.

Also, the old pagebanner always struck me as kind of meh; I had it up there mostly as a placeholder. I remember it having been said that we try to stay away from generic skyline shots in banners in favor of something more distinctive, and IMO Buffalo has kind of a disappointing skyline for a city that has such great architecture - there seems to be a negative correlation in downtown between a building's height and its architectural distinction. The photo was somewhat outdated, too - it still had the Dulski Federal Building which was demolished some years ago to make way for a new high-rise hotel, and the HSBC symbol was still at the top of One Seneca.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:54, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

IK is right. The previous one was a lot better than current one. Sorry Andrew. --Saqib (talk) 23:56, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

If what I see in your photo is all I knew about Buffalo, I wouldn't want to visit the city. It may be an interesting picture, but the scene it presents is fairly ugly to my eyes. Fortunately, I've been to Buffalo and like it. I remember the pretty buildings downtown, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the nice, leafy neighborhood near the university where I stayed with a friend, and because of that, I talk up Buffalo as a worthwhile place to visit. You mean to tell me that this is the best image you can get to do justice to your city? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:00, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Andrew, just incase you not aware, there're plenty of free licensed nice images of Buffalo and its skyline on Flickr. --Saqib (talk) 00:05, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm kind of perplexed at the reaction here. I think this discussion cuts to the heart of the question of what is the point of pagebanners. Yes, they're supposed to be pretty pictures, but they also should advance the narrative contained in the text of what a destination is all about. In the lede section of the article, I talk about the palpable sense of history as a major industrial center, which means more than just the fabulous mansions of wealthy industrialists. And I also talk about majestic architecture, which the grain elevators (which we have more of than any other place in the world) are part and parcel of. I guess that some people might think the picture is ugly, but I personally see in this picture a great sense of power and a real scrappy resilience. A lot of people clearly agree with me, because industrial heritage tourism is getting bigger here every year. You can go to any city and find rich neighborhoods and art galleries and pretty parks, but few places in the world have things like guided boat tours down the Buffalo River, such a wealth of attractions for railroad enthusiasts, new condos going up along Ohio Street, grain elevators being converted into concert venues and art galleries, nature preserves in old brownfields, and more and more. This is a unique heritage that we're rightly proud of. It's considered outmoded around here to talk about the grain elevators as if they were eyesores, to the point where the mayor of Lackawanna was recently lambasted in the local press for suggesting they be torn down en masse.

More importantly, pretty much the only thing that the people in this conversation have focused on thus far is the industrial stuff on the right side of the picture, when, in reality, my intent was to shine an equal light on the downtown skyline at center. As an artist, I tend to think in metaphors, and what I see here is a union of the past and the future, of the blue-collar and the white-collar, and of two different types of beauty. I don't think that's going to be lost on everybody who sees the picture, and I think it's a very honest yet still complimentary representation of what Buffalo has to offer visitors.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:36, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I see a few (2-3) really small-looking nice buildings in the distance and an industrial landscape in the foreground. If the emphasis were a little more equal, I probably would have had a different reaction. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:42, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I'll defer to you somewhat, AndreCarrotflower, but I'm sorry if I burst your bubble a bit by being shocked. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:55, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

To Ikan Kekek: No worries. I was just a bit taken by surprise, that's all. I'd like to leave a little bit of time to further build consensus one way or the other, but if not, I'm open to compromise. I have a couple of Plan B's in mind. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:45, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I'd definitely be interested in seeing your Plan B's. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:22, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I think the current banner is certainly an improvement from before. The previous banner was a fairly unappealing skyline that didn't capture the appeal of this city for the traveler. We can consider other alternatives, but I like the way that the new photo depicts the industrial character of the city. Edge3 (talk) 02:26, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I think this one actually does capture Buffalo in an interesting way. The previous banner was a real snooze to be honest. This one has character. I would prefer this over the previous one. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 06:15, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Andre, well done! I like the new banner a lot, it is certainly interesting to look at. The previous one wasn't bad, but I prefer this one, I agree that it has character. Danapit (talk) 08:51, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Buffalo's skyline is just not photogenic. At all. I've yet to see an attractive shot. It's weird, because individually the buildings are fine -- particularly City Hall. But as a collection, either there's no good vantage point, or the buildings just don't harmonize with each other. The old banner was about as good as it gets, and that isn't saying much. The new banner is excellent compositionally (except for that annoying lamppost on the left side); my one major complaint would be that it's too dark. (Also it's 2 pixels too wide for its height.) Powers ^(talk) 14:47, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I'd observe that there's nothing that in principle would prevent an image of a single building from being a pagebanner. Perhaps there are good images of individual buildings. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:42, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

To LtPowers: Agreed on it being too dark. I lightened it up a little just now. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:35, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

It actually seems a bit too light and washed out in the upper left corner now, on my Lenovo laptop's screen. Take that for whatever it's worth. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:04, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Ehh, I've just about given up trying to figure out whether it's my laptop's display that's too bright or my desktop display that's not bright enough. At any rate, the page title blocks out a lot of the washed-outedness at the upper left, doesn't it? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:12, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

The highlights are blown, but I think they were blown in the original too. The difference is negligible as far as I can see. Powers ^(talk) 23:19, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

You're right. Now that I'm comparing the two, I actually can't tell where the difference is! Yes, the title does block out some of the washed-out part. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:58, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I think Andre found a great spot for a photo; I might suggest heading back out sometime and trying it under different lighting conditions. The camera is facing just west of due north here, so I'd guess the photo was taken in the late afternoon. That doesn't explain what caused that bright spot in the sky, though; it can't be the sun because it's in the northwest part of the sky. Anyway, I'd suggest heading out in the early afternoon on a partly cloudy day, and waiting for the sun to go behind a cloud. That's how I got the best lighting for the pics I took at the Lilac Festival last year (including the one I used as the pagebanner for Rochester). Powers ^(talk) 01:10, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Some new pagebanners

Swept in from the pub

I've put new pagebanners on Buffalo/Downtown and Buffalo/Elmwood Village. The last time I did this there was some controversy, so I figured it would be good to solicit other editors' feedback before I get too mentally committed to them.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:25, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

They both look good. I don't think there will be any controversy over these. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:26, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, nice banners! :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:18, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Ikan and Nicolas. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:29, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Nice banners, and looks like you shot them yourself? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 09:50, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes; with perhaps one or two exceptions, all the pictures in the Buffalo district articles were taken by me. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:10, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

A writer-cum-photographer-cum-sysop is equal to a great Wikivoyager. --Saqib (talk) 16:52, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Recent Updates

Just because it is inferior doesn't mean that a link isn't required. Some people may wish to compare. Personally I doubt that I'll go to either of them, so does that mean they both should be deleted.

I looked and didn't see a wikilink to Rochester. In a large article why make somebody search the entire article? Cpfan776 (talk) 19:33, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

As I mentioned before, our policy is to avoid negative reviews. The only reason I mentioned Theodore's at all is because of the natural confusion that many readers may have; if not for that, anr would have precluded me from mentioning it at all (and I held out for a long time on that basis). Simply put, their hot dogs are terrible.

As for the link to Rochester, Wikivoyage:Internal links states that we "link only the first instance of a link target" except in special cases such as lists, and cautions authors "don't overlink" (emphasis in original). You can find the link to Rochester (New York) in the "By car" subsection of "Get in".

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:09, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

You may be interpreting the Internal links policy too strictly (though I agree it's written strictly). It's better to err on the side of too many internal links than too few, as it can be hard for a reader to find a link if it's up several screens, especially since they may not have read the article straight through from the top. Powers ^(talk) 23:43, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

City of the Month

Is it just some coincidence or is this really the city of the month? Buffaboy (talk) 21:12, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

That's correct, Buffalo is the Destination of the Month for June. ϒpsilon (talk) 21:18, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Wow, congratulations then! Is there some page where they are nominated like Features articles? Buffaboy (talk) 19:16, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Buffaboy - yes, indeed there is. Check out Wikivoyage:Destination of the month candidates for the current nominees. (By the way, are you the individual who comments under the same name at Buffalo Rising?) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:39, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Andrecarrottflower, I am, and your username seems familiar as well. My main profile is on Wikipedia as far as editing there is concerned, but I am one and the same. Buffaboy (talk) 04:52, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Star nomination

Buffalo

Maybe I'm biased (who are we kidding here? Of course I'm biased), but if there's anything keeping us from elevating this article to Star status, I can't imagine what it might be. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:46, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• Support. This is really an excellent set of guides. All of the district pages are marvelously detailed (seriously, the descriptions here might give the Chicago pages — my traditional gold standard for Wikivoyage guides — a run for their money!). It's clear that a lot of hard work and enthusiasm went into the creation of these guides, and it seems only right to bestow a star upon it. If you haven't already, I would recommend going through the district pages and making sure the content in there is up-to-date (admission prices haven't been raised, restaurants haven't closed, etc.). There are a couple of minor things I would like to see addressed before the main Buffalo page becomes a star, but neither of them are serious hurdles:

• I would like to see district names on the district map. The current color-coding is fine, but a little extra reinforcement wouldn't hurt. Plus, it would help those who are colorblind.
• The opening paragraph of the Understand section is uncharacteristically dull for this guide. Not that there isn't a place for some of these facts in this guide, although I think we can do without the long list of awards — I don't think what the New York Times had to say about Buffalo six years ago is that noteworthy, nor is an award bestowed literally almost twenty years ago now.

Other than that, nothing comes to mind. Fine work! PerryPlanet (talk) 19:37, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• Support. A few small items that might be worth addressing:

• In the Buffalo#Architecture section, the "Buffalo Architecture and History" link, while valuable, seems like a violation of WV:XL.
• While the "See" section notes that more information can be found in the district articles, there isn't any indication what district each museum can be found in ("Located in the XYZ district, the ABC & DEF museums...").
• Given the article's length, a few more pictures or some infoboxes might be helpful. There are several sections where you can scroll through 2-3 screens and see nothing but text.
• There should probably be an "Itineraries" section to specifically call out articles like Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side - while that article is linked in two other places I think it would be best to also have a separate section like we do with Chicago#See.

Nice work! -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:36, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• Responding to some of the points brought up thus far:

• District names on the map - it might be difficult to find a place for the labels in the case of Allentown and the Delaware District and the Elmwood Village: districts with long names that, on the map, are taller than they are wide and not adjacent to any water or gray space. It's a good idea in theory, though, so if anyone can manage the logistics of it that'd be great.
• "Buffalo Architecture and History" website as violation of wv:xl - I think this might very well be a case of "the exception that proves the rule". This website is undeniably a greatly valuable resource for architecture buffs, which make up one of the largest niche tourist markets for Buffalo. Yet there's far more information on that website than could ever conceivably be summarized in the Buffalo article, any of the district articles, or even a hypothetical Architecture in Buffalo travel topic.
• Dull lede in the Understand section, clarifying to which district articles the name-checked attractions in the See section belong, and an Itineraries section - points are well taken; I'll get to work on those ASAP. (I especially like the latter idea, given that I have brainstorms for about a half-dozen more Buffalo-related itinerary articles.)

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:07, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

With the district names, you could try shortening them (such as just Allentown or Allentown/Delaware). I also think the map would benefit from such additions. James A ▪ talk 02:40, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

• Support - While useful suggestions have been made, I'm not sure anyone would have complained if you had upgraded this one unilaterally ;-) The quality is obvious, and it has been clear to me for a long time that you are the most eloquent writer on this site. I would welcome more images, too. The sheer amount of words is somewhat... overwhelming, especially on mobile. Without wanting to suggest deletions, and with a lot of admiration for the work, I will say in general that this is a little overcomplete for my taste. At least, for a travel guide; I imagine it is the perfect expat guide. I'm only saying this because I find it important that this kind of guide does not become the new benchmark for great articles. It holds literally dozens of places of worship and dozens of laundry services. It list a bunch of colleges and schools, with information about their history and such, but without information about the relevance for travelers (e.g. summer courses, short language courses). There are many eat listings, most with rather lengthy descriptions; it's hard to scan the articles for the best places to eat without spending some serious time reading. About safety, the Buffalo-article states that "Follow general precautions that would apply in any urban area (..) and you should be fine pretty much anywhere." And that's indeed the main message I get from reading the stay safe sections in all the districts - so they could be much more compact, or in some cases even be left out, for me. Again, I'll gladly admit that some of this is a matter of taste. As for wv:xl; unfortunately, value has never been the determining force in our linking policy. I have no objections to the link (and many others), but technically, there's no reason a valuable site for architecture buffs is any different from links that hugely benefit history buffs, shoppers or who-ever. The only thing that puzzles me, is why Eat, Sleep, Buy and worship listings all get such extensive descriptions, while Drink-listings get nothing but an address and a phone number? JuliasTravels (talk) 14:11, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, let's not conflate the Buffalo article with the district articles. I'll be the first to admit that the district articles are not perfect and are probably overly wordy, but they contain all the information a Guide-level article needs, and if we decide that promoting a Huge City to Star means holding its district articles to the same standard, we'd have to demote most if not all of our Huge City Stars.

The reason I feel that Buffalo Architecture and History should be an exception to the usual wv:xl procedure is that, inasmuch as Buffalo has a great deal to offer visitors in any given specialized niche, it's architecture. While we obviously have shopping districts, Buffalo wouldn't be the first destination on anyone's mind who's travelling for the explicit purpose of shopping; while there are obviously historical sites in Buffalo, they're not prominent enough on a national or international level to draw huge numbers of people from outside the region on their own merits. On the other hand, the list of reasons why Buffalo is an unusually important city for its size in the domain of architecture is long enough that architecture buffs make up a significant proportion of tourists here, so IMO it seems fine to offer a little more in the way of detailed information for that particular group.

As for your questions about the Drink sections, the short answer is I'm not a drinker myself and don't have much use for nightlife. I can give enough general information about the bar scene in any given area of Buffalo to fill out the introductory blurbs at the beginning of each district article's "Drink" section, but I think it's better to leave descriptions of the individual listings to someone with more expertise than myself.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:06, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Of course - and as I stated, I fully support the upgrade even without any changes. I just feel that districts are at the heart of any guide, and this is the most obvious place to comment on the general approach of the package of articles (individual district nominations will stand alone even more). As for the link, I should perhaps have said history buffs or shoppers in other destinations. Looking at the link however, I too find it very useful and I'm happy to support allowing this one per consensus, even if it's not in line with policy. It's weird anyway that suggested reading in terms of books or movies to watch is fine, but websites are by definition unwanted. JuliasTravels (talk) 16:12, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

It's not that they're unwanted, per se; it's a slippery slope, though. It's much easier to ban them all than to be able to define which ones are acceptable and which ones aren't. Oddly enough, I think we might allow bare URLs to valuable online resources on par with books in information value, so long as they weren't linked -- but that would be just silly from a usability perspective.

• Not Yet.
  1. While I share Julias' concerns about length, I think most of this article (as opposed to the districts) is fine. Some of the Eat listings go on a bit. (The name-dropping in the Charlie the Butcher's entry is particularly egregious.) There's a tricky balance to strike in travel writing between explaining what makes something worth experiencing and providing an overwhelming amount of background information. I fear this article is just a bit on the high side. Some of the more tangential (but interesting) tidbits could be moved into infoboxes.
  2. I also agree that the external link is disallowed by policy and shouldn't be in a star article. I would welcome proposals that would allow highly valuable links such as this while keeping out the rabble, without greatly adding to editors' workload. (The links to buffaBLOG and the Guide to Buffalo English seem to have the same problem.)
  3. The Drink section, by contrast to Eat, is crazy short. Are there no chain bars or coffee shops of note? No individual shops worthy of calling out as destinations? And while I know it's a well-known chain in Canada, seems like Tim Horton's would merit at least a mention given its proliferation in the region. =)
  4. A few formatting issues: the titles of television series should be italicized, not quoted. Template:SeeDistricts should be used below each section header rather than the custom text in bold.
  5. The lede section is pretty short considering the length of the rest of the article. I would like to see some of the city's biggest highlights called out here. The same goes for the district listings.
  6. I totally understand the impetus behind putting the suburb listings in the Districts section, but I really think they belong in Go Next.
  7. Speaking of Go Next, I believe by policy these are supposed to be one-liner listings.

  That's it for now. It's really close, but I don't feel comfortable holding this up as a star just yet. -- Powers ^(talk) 00:28, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Where are we with this one? I has been several years since there was any comment here. To me it looks like there are some unresolved issues in the comments above.

For the question about linking to the Architecture & History website, I'd say that is fine. See Talk:Shanghai#Policy_question_for_listing for two somewhat similar cases. Pashley (talk) 18:52, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Sorry for the belated response. It's been almost two years since I chimed in here, and since then my thinking has changed a bit on a lot of the sticking points, most notably when it comes to external links. I think the link to buffaBLOG can definitely be jettisoned, as it's not nearly as popular a source of local music news as it was when I first included it, and The Guide to Buffalo English is outdated to the point of near-uselessness. Buffalo Architecture & History will still hurt a little bit to excise, but after the current phase of my work on Buffalo winds down (shortening blurbs in the district articles and reorganizing the district hierarchy), I intend to shift focus to itinerary articles of walking tours for architecture buffs (I already mocked up a first draft of one), which will cover more or less the same ground as BuffaloAH. I also would have no problem shortening the blurbs in the "Eat" section (indeed, I'm already hard at work on that task in the district articles) and adding length to "Drink". I feel like I do have to continue to push back about listing the suburbs under the "Districts" section (having them in "Go next" would be problematic since none of those places can really hold a candle to what's already in that section in terms of visitor interest, yet they obviously deserve to be linked from the Buffalo article in some form or fashion), and the length of the blurbs in "Go next" (they can be shortened a bit, I guess, but reducing each to one line would make the section near-useless). -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:05, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

• Most of the people who brought up opinions in this nomination (obviously, besides AndreCarrotflower) are not even editors on Wikivoyage anymore. Should we perhaps decide not yet on this one and start a new nomination on a clean slate? So much is included here that, for anyone to express any new opinions, they have to read through the whole discussion, which I don't want to do and I don't think anyone else would want to do either. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:26, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, let's do that. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:59, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Sure. I won't be able to do that now, and I'm not completely sure when I'll have the time. I might try this evening (Pacific Time), but we'll see how it goes. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:53, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

• Result: slushed. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:11, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Canadian radio

I'm not sure why the Canadian radio stations were removed. Seems like the article should cover any station that can be heard in Buffalo. Powers ^(talk) 15:25, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

The "Radio" subsection mentions that Toronto stations can generally be heard in Buffalo, and I think that's enough. It seems to me like any listings or information on specific stations belong in the Toronto article, or the article for whatever place the stations are located. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:11, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

But how would the reader find those places, aside from Toronto? Powers ^(talk) 17:48, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Buffalo Districts Revisited

As many of you probably know, I'm currently wrapping up a campaign of bringing the Buffalo district articles up to date before I revisit the Gaspé Peninsula project I started some time ago. And, as many of you also know, Buffalo - while a perfectly worthy destination with much to offer visitors - is in the grand scheme of things a fairly ordinary midsize city that can't really hold a candle to places like, say, New York City, Paris, or Tokyo when it comes to tourist attractions. So, as you can imagine, it's a bit jarring to observe that four of the ten longest articles on Wikivoyage are Buffalo district articles.

Herein lies the conflict. It's a point of great pride for me as an author that the Buffalo articles represent easily the most detailed and fine-grained coverage of any city or any destination on Wikivoyage. One of the reasons why I took so zealously to the task of writing about Buffalo when I first joined the community in December 2011 was my frustration, whenever I picked up a copy of Lonely Planet or some other hardcopy travel guide and checked out their coverage of my hometown, that they couldn't be bothered to devote more than maybe a page or two to the most clichéd attractions and activities, with an abundance of outdated information and factual errors. My work here is the antidote to that, and I wouldn't rather it be any other way. However, it does strike me as troubling and out of whack that, just as one possible example, our article on the East Side of Buffalo - an off-the-beaten-path backwater neighborhood even by Buffalo standards - is nearly 25% longer than our article on the entire United States.

At various times in the past, it's been intimated to me that "[my] enthusiasm is inspiring, but at some point [I] do have to edit [my]self." I understand the impetus behind that line of thinking, and to a certain extent I agree: in recent days I've taken opportunities, where I felt it was appropriate to do so, to excise certain categories of listings that might have been described as too Yellow Page-y, and I think there may yet be some more opportunity to do so. But in general, I feel that excluding any content that could potentially be of interest to a visitor to Buffalo - merely for the sake of brevity, and especially if it's the kind of thing other travel guides omit - is detrimental to the site's mission vis-à-vis the end user, and I feel uncomfortable doing it. I've always been of the opinion that districtification, devolution to smaller region articles in the case of destinations other than cities, or similar subdivision schemes are always the ideal answer to articles that are too lengthy.

To that end, I've come up with an idea whereby many of the current Buffalo districts would be subdivided into smaller articles. In part, I've used Chicago's districts as my model here - the city is broken into ten pieces for the purposes of the 7±2 list and map at Chicago#Districts ("7±2" defined loosely in that case, apparently), but each of those ten, rather than comprising districts in and of themselves, are composed of a number of adjacent neighborhoods each with their own individual article. For Buffalo, I imagine that the current map in the Districts section would remain more or less the same - aside from a few minor boundary changes, the major exception would be that Allentown and the Delaware District (two neighborhoods I wasn't super comfortable lumping together in the first place) would be split off from each other - and many of the geographically smaller districts (downtown and the Elmwood Village as well as the newly split-off Allentown and Delaware District) would remain as individual articles rather than clusters of neighborhoods with individual ones.

Here's my proposal for the new breakdown:

• Downtown - Buffalo/Downtown as it is currently

• Allentown - portion of current Allentown and the Delaware District article lying south of North Street

• Delaware District - portion of current Allentown and the Delaware District article lying north of North Street, MINUS the west side of Main Street between West Ferry and North Streets (to East)

• Elmwood Village - Buffalo/Elmwood Village as it is currently

• North - current borders of Buffalo/North Buffalo MINUS West Hertel (to West)

• Buffalo/University Heights
• Buffalo/Parkside-Central Park - including the Vernon Triangle, Park Meadow, and all Delaware Park content currently in North Buffalo article
• Buffalo/Little Italy - Hertel Avenue, Kenmore Avenue, Delaware and Elmwood Avenues BUT NOT West Hertel

• West - current borders of Buffalo/West Side PLUS West Hertel (from current North Buffalo)

• Buffalo/Lower West Side - including West Village
• Buffalo/Upper West Side
• Buffalo/Black Rock-Riverside - including Grant-Amherst and West Hertel

• South - current borders of Buffalo/South Buffalo MINUS Clinton-Bailey (everything north of I-190 and Pennsylvania RR tracks; to East)

• Buffalo/Outer Harbor-Old First Ward - including Cobblestone District and The Valley
• Buffalo/Larkinville - including Seneca-Babcock BUT NOT Clinton-Bailey
• Buffalo/South Buffalo - remainder of current article

• East - current borders of Buffalo/East Side PLUS west side of Main Street from West Ferry to North Streets (from current Allentown and the Delaware District) AND Clinton-Bailey (from current South Buffalo)

• Buffalo/Midtown-Near East Side - Midtown (incl aforementioned addition @ west side of Main Street), Near East Side, Ellicott District, Fruit Belt, Cold Spring, Masten Park
• Buffalo/Northeast Buffalo - Ken-Bailey/Kensington Heights, Delavan-Bailey, Highland Park, (Schiller Park?)
• Buffalo/East Central - Hamlin Park, Humboldt Park, Genesee-Moselle, Delavan-Grider, (Schiller Park?)
• Buffalo/Polonia - Broadway-Fillmore & St. John Kanty
• Buffalo/Lovejoy-Kaisertown - including Clinton-Bailey

It should be noted that this makes for 18 separate district articles, whose lengths would likely range from 75-150 KB each. I'm well aware that for a city with a population of ~250,000 to be subdivided so finely is unprecedented on our site. In response to that, I would reiterate the fact that the level of detail in our coverage of Buffalo is itself unprecedented, as well as my firmly held belief that any and all information that's potentially of interest to tourists is content that's beneficial to Wikivoyage and should remain. Another upside is that because our coverage of Buffalo is essentially complete, there should be no need for any further subdivision of the article after this.

As I mentioned already, my next major project after the current round of Buffalo updates will be to finally complete my work on the Gaspé Peninsula, so this further subdistricting of the Buffalo article would be more of a medium-term than a short-term priority. My target completion date would be summer 2019, by which time it will have been two years since Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side's turn as FTT, and a Buffalo district article could conceivably be nominated as OtBP.

Please chime in with your thoughts.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:07, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't know Buffalo well enough to have any specific opinions on your proposal, but I agree with you that useful content and background shouldn't be removed. Someday, someone may be inspired to provide similarly comprehensive coverage of other, better-known cities, all of which have attractions known only to some locals that some visitors might be interested in. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:30, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Mostly I'm looking for reassurance that I'm not completely insane in proposing to split Buffalo up into so many districts. :) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:34, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

If you think that's what would best serve the traveler, I would trust you. Who on this site, other than you, knows Buffalo well? Presumably, User:LtPowers. Anyone else? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:05, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't know Buffalo well at all. But I am uncomfortable with this level of granularity in any city's coverage. We allow it in a few cases out of necessity, but I'm not convinced it's necessary here. I fear that this is the proverbial firehose of information and we're forcing Buffalo visitors to drink from it. At the moment, the amount of information is simply overwhelming, and I'm afraid it might drive visitors away rather than attract them. Powers ^(talk) 13:27, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

That seems like a lot of districts, and a lot of content, wow! Have you considered writing a book on Buffalo? I doubt if there is anyone who has more information about the city than you. It even feels like you are restraining yourself a bit writing for this format! Like just from skimming a few of the districts I believe there is even more you know about Buffalo than is written here. Ok, I think: 1.) you should write a fantastic book about Buffalo. 2.) the amount of content here is a little overwhelming for me personally. 3.) The first comment by Ikan is really good. 4.) Yeah, it's a lot of content though. 5.) I guess don't redistrict the city to get the relative filesizes down, do it because it makes sense. 6.) I don't know anything about Buffalo. 7.) Good luck! --ButteBag (talk) 21:57, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Powers and ButteBag's comment cut to the heart of exactly why I feel like further subdivision is necessary. 175KB-360KB, the current size of the Buffalo district articles, is a lot of information to chew on in one piece. If the information were instead contained in a larger number of articles that were each one-third to one-half as long as the current articles, I think each individual article would be much less overwhelming to the average traveller, and I disagree that the greater number of districts would be significantly more overwhelming given that most of the would-be future districts are already name-checked and briefly described in the main Buffalo article (take a look at the descriptive text that's currently in Buffalo#Districts, which I doubt would have to be changed much). A traveller can get an idea of what each individual district is all about and whether it's of interest to him or her, so there's no need to click on, and wade through the information in, each and every district article.

Regarding ButteBag's specific comments in point #5, the determination for whether and to what degree an article needs to be districtified is, explicitly, article length rather than the size of the destination itself. There are many cities with populations much larger than Buffalo's that aren't districtified at all, and won't need to be until more information is added. The goal is to prevent exactly what you mentioned above, an overwhelming amount of information to slog through in one sitting.

Regarding Powers' comments about granularity, I think we start down a bad road when we talk about strict curation of content. When we get in the business of selectively omitting worthy information, we force on the reader our own judgments, or those of so-called "conventional wisdom", regarding what is more or less essential for tourists to do, see, or know, rather than letting them judge for themselves. And that serves to homogenize our content into the same handful of obvious, clichéd tourist sites and background factoids that are already covered over and over by all the Lonely Planets and Frommer'ses of the world, which does not help Wikivoyage distinguish itself from the pack, as we've sought to do, or play to our strengths as a specifically online travel guide. Just as one of Wikipedia's advantages relative to hardcopy encyclopedias is that it doesn't have to be small enough to fit on a bookshelf, Wikivoyage has the freedom to delve a lot deeper into a place like Buffalo, and show many more different facets, than the aforementioned one or two pages it merits in the average paper copy of Lonely Planet. There's a subset of travellers that specifically looks for in-depth coverage, and specifically seeks out information on attractions and experiences that are worthwhile yet that few other tourists know about, and is turned off by the glossing over of places like Buffalo in other sources. I know because I'm one of them. And I think that's a niche that Wikivoyage is well-equipped to cater to.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:01, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Good argument. The only "problem" with the Buffalo articles is that they have too much content. This seems like an issue unique among Wikivoyage articles. It will be interesting to see how it's resolved. Also, just to play devil's advocate, shouldn't any travel article seek to be "in the business of selectively omitting worthy information"? Worthy to who? I have no answer. I do think Wikivoyage should showcase "The Classics" found in other guides, while affording unlimited space to hold the "Deep Cuts" that are often left out. Come for New York, stay for the Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side. Surprise and delight, etc. --ButteBag (talk) 15:13, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, that's the eternal balance, isn't it? Do you include all of the information someone might want, or do you target the majority who just want the highlights? I agree that curation is exactly the role of a good travel guide. TripAdvisor and Yelp include everything, but they are not travel guides; they are directories. And I'm uncomfortable with edging Wikivoyage into that territory, especially if it means dividing a midsized city into so many districts that a reader can scarcely tell where to begin. I have to admit that I don't think I've read any of these articles all the way through, even the main Buffalo article. The scope is just overwhelming. That would be probably improve with shorter articles, but I just don't have a good feel for how the typical traveler would navigate the finer subdivisions. Powers ^(talk) 19:59, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Let's be honest with ourselves. Wikivoyage is a small fish and can't compete head-to-head with Lonely Planet, Frommer's and the other big players who only "target the majority who just want the highlights". We're a minnow in a shark tank in that regard, and always will be if we try to pursue the same market they're pursuing. How we can make a name for ourselves is by offering something they can't or won't. The other guys are for-profit companies who have a limited staff that they pay to send all over the world, to places unfamiliar to them where they stay for a limited period of time. We're not-for-profit, run by a theoretically unlimited number of volunteers who don't do what they do for any other reason than their intimate knowledge of and passion for the destination they're writing about, writing in general, or both - not for a paycheck, not for kickbacks from places we talk up in our articles, nothing like that. Even if Lonely Planet wanted to devote the same level of coverage to Buffalo as Wikivoyage does - and you can feel free to substitute for Buffalo any other place that's not in the upper tier of tourist destinations - they couldn't. They don't have the resources. In many ways, the Buffalo district articles embody exactly what Wikivoyage should be doing. You're never going to read this stuff anywhere else.

Notwithstanding all that, Wikivoyage's coverage of Buffalo does indeed serve "The Classics" to "the majority who just want the highlights". Look at Buffalo#See, which serves as a perfect condensed version of all the essentials for people who will be here no more than a day or two. The important destinations are name-checked and described in a succinct way. No, they're not listingified, but anyone who wants to know opening hours, admissions fees, etc. can refer to the actual listing in the relevant district article. It's the same simple process as in other Huge City articles, and here I am proposing to make it even simpler by reducing the amount of additional information the reader has to dig through in that district article to find what they're looking for. That's why I'm a bit bemused by ButteBag's comment about "classics" vs. "deep cuts". The district articles are the deep cuts, just as much as Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side is. If you're reading the whole district article from front to back, you're obviously more passionate about your upcoming visit to Buffalo than the casual day tripper who just realized there's not enough to do in Niagara Falls to fill out a whole three-day weekend. Good on you. Wikivoyage has you covered too.

Lastly, I reject the comparison of my approach to Yelp or TripAdvisor. Wikivoyage isn't a free-for-all. There are specific boundary lines drawn as to what constitutes information relevant to tourists vs. Yellow Page-y categories of places, and we have a clear policy against negative reviews, unlike Yelp or TripAdvisor which practically encourage negative reviews as part of their mission to help their users separate the wheat from the chaff. If you want to call that "curation", then fine, we're curated to a certain degree and that's a good thing. I'm saying that too much curation is detrimental to our goals vis-à-vis the reader, and we shouldn't take it any further than we need to. More than that, though there's some degree of overlap with the domain of reviews, what we do here at Wikivoyage has a different purpose. We're supposed to describe rather than evaluate. Though we certainly don't have to remain completely neutral, the point of what we do is not to tell readers that this place serves great food or that place's prices are too expensive, but rather what kind of food is served and what the prices are and let them decide for themselves. That's the difference between us and review sites, and I think my writing stays on the right of the divide more often than not. And I don't see extent of coverage as having anything to do, really, with that difference.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:57, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I feel like Andre has defended his point of view much more eloquently than anyone else could. I'm loath to argue too much with his plans, precisely because he's such a good writer, and I don't want to leave really good writing on the cutting room floor, as long as it could reasonably be of interest to someone. I looked through the main Buffalo article again, and I don't find it overwhelmingly long in the least — with the possible exception of the Eat section, which quite arguably lists too many specific names of eateries and chains.

I do agree that Andre's new scheme for dividing up the city is pretty daunting, though. Let's look at Berlin, by comparison. It's a much bigger city, and it's absolutely full of sights, activities, places to eat and drink, shops, hotels, etc., etc. de:Berlin has a hierarchy comparable to the one proposed for Buffalo above, and it came in for some cogent criticism at Talk:Berlin#Rebooting districts. Berlin does not, but manages to divide the city and all its Bezirke into only 6 Wikivoyage districts. All the district articles except for Berlin/South (which is a Guide) are Usable (and the Berlin guide itself is Usable), so in that respect, not a model to use, but they are hardly lacking in content, and the content is often subdivided within sections between different constituent Bezirke. Munich is also quite a sizable city, and one with supreme interest for tourists. It is divided into 7 Wikivoyage districts. Every single one is a Guide, and the Munich article was fairly recently featured as DotM. You brought up Paris. Of course, it has the 20 Arrondissements plus La Défense, but it's Paris!

So where do I come down? As reluctant as I am to question your judgment, I think that you really should seriously consider whether some content can be removed from the current Buffalo district articles without damage to the travelers Wikivoyage is meant to serve. Let's look at some examples. Buffalo/Allentown and the Delaware District#Art and art supplies would be useful to any of my artist friends who might decide to paint cityscapes in Buffalo and run out of supplies while they're there. But first, I doubt any of them would consult Wikivoyage to find out about art supply stores, and second, they are surely a vanishingly small percent of Wikivoyage's audience. Buffalo/Allentown and the Delaware District#Furniture and home decor is a questionable section because a lot of visitors don't have room for furniture in their luggage. I don't know if Buffalo is particularly well known for furniture. Is it, or is it more likely that people driving through the area would want to stop off at antique shops in the countryside? Let's also look at Buffalo/Elmwood Village#Clothing and accessories. Do we really need to have 21 listings there? Sure, they're annotated, which is great, but the very number of listings is pretty overwhelming and undoubtedly the kind of thing that is causing the others to see these as something like annotated Yellow Pages lists. I'm sure there are way more than 21 places where a person could buy clothing and accessories in NoLiTa alone, but I sure wouldn't want to slog through even a well-annotated list of them in the Manhattan/Chinatown guide.

I think that all your content will surely be useful to someone, but in thinking about the "less is more" vs. "more is more" debate on thumbnails that we had at Wikivoyage talk:Image policy, I do think that while you should absolutely save all of this text somewhere, you may need to make some choices about which clothing stores are truly unusual or outstanding, whether any of the furniture stores are so outstanding that they should be listed, and if so, which. Etc.

So to sum up: I think that you have several options: (1) add a couple of more districts, as 10 is not a daunting number; (2) subdivide listings in district articles by neighborhood, when the districts include more than one; (3) remove some listings that aren't so exceptional that listing them is worth the benefit of making the district articles easier to read. You want to avoid the reader's eyes glazing over and giving up. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:24, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

(unindent) I admit that your points about listings that are of minimal relevance to travellers are sensible, though I disagree that they apply to the Buffalo district articles to the extent that you say they do, Ikan. To address your specific examples:

1. Regarding furniture: while Buffalo as a whole is not especially well-known for furniture, there are some individual Buffalo shopping districts that are well-known locally for their selection. As for travellers fitting furniture into their luggage, on my trips to visit my brother in Brooklyn I've more than once brought home a piece of furniture I picked up there. Obviously I'm talking about something small enough to fit in a car - an ottoman, a lamp, a wall hanging, a couple of bar stools - and I've tried to limit any listings of furniture stores on Wikivoyage to places that specialize, or at least have a decent selection, of smaller-size items (at least in the absence of notability in other domains, cf. Manuel Barreto in Buffalo/Allentown and the Delaware District#Furniture and home decor.)
2. Regarding Buffalo/Allentown and the Delaware District#Art and art supplies: only one of the five listings in that section would be useful for "any of [your] artist friends who might decide to paint cityscapes in Buffalo and run out of supplies while they're there", and I included it because it's an extraordinarily longstanding local business of some regional renown. The other listings are art galleries, which I list in "Buy" when they offer works for sale rather than simply exhibiting them. I don't think it's so unusual for travellers to want to pick something up like that - again using myself as an example, I have a wall in my living room covered with framed prints I've collected on my various travels.
3. Regarding Buffalo/Elmwood Village#Clothing and accessories: while I agree that 21 clothing store listings is pushing the envelope and this is a case where I'd be more open to paring the list down, I might note that there's relatively little in the way of redundancy between the stores: there's only one Cool Hand Luke-inspired menswear store, one customized t-shirt printer, one ultra-high end art sneaker boutique, etc.

And I'd also like to say some words in my own defense in that I do have standards for the listings I choose to add to the Buffalo district articles. It's not as if every corner bodega gets a listing in the "Specialty foods" or "Grocery stores" section, as if every prepaid cell phone shop with a few T-shirts hanging on the back wall is duly listed in "Buy#Clothing and accessories", as if every McDonald's or Applebee's goes in "Eat". I love my hometown, but it's not as if I see every operating business in town as a special snowflake, a great and wonderful place that everyone who comes to Buffalo absolutely must visit. I try to do right by our readers and if I've taken the time to compose a blurb and type it out, it's for a good reason.

Notwithstanding all that, I do think, as I said before on this thread, there are ways to reduce the number of total listings. Personally, I'd be more comfortable looking at types of places that may be of less relevance to travellers - the laundromats and dry cleaners listed currently under "Cope" could go, as could pizza delivery, as could supermarkets, as could liquor stores (except for microbreweries and artisanal distilleries with attached retail spaces, I culled all "Liquor, beer and wine" subsections en masse from Buffalo/East Side#Buy a few months ago, and would be open to doing the same for the other districts too) - than I would be getting into the game of deciding which places are "notable" enough to pass muster and which aren't. Frankly, aside from the fact that such a cherry-picking process would be inherently subjective, I have to wonder why we hold notability to be such a desirable trait in whether or not we choose to include a listing. Certainly for "See" and "Do" listings the value of that trait is self-evident, but for "Buy", "Eat", and "Drink", I have to question the practice of funneling our readers to what would, in the end, likely end up being the same select few places they'd be most likely to find on their own anyway, or be directed to by our competition, against whom we'll always lose out if all we have to offer is the same product they do.

I certainly think all of the foregoing should be part of the conversation about what to do about the Buffalo problem, and I'm going to perhaps awkwardly insert here an idea about tightening up the prose in the listings, for want of a more natural place to segue into it. But I don't think that by itself is sufficient - we'd still be dealing with behemoth articles, I think, without further subdivision being on the table. One thing I've noticed that no one seems to have addressed is what harm, exactly, a districtification scheme like I proposed would do. Would it seem strange for Buffalo to be divided into more districts than Berlin and a comparable number to Paris? Perhaps, but so what? What does one have to do with the other, as far as the end user is concerned? Why would a person using Wikivoyage to plan a trip to Buffalo waste time reading about Berlin, which is the only realistic way they'd even come to realize the discrepancy? And even if they did notice, how would that affect their experience with the Buffalo article? If Berlin is such a bigger city and more prominent tourist destination than Buffalo, wouldn't it make sense to talk about subdividing it into more districts if someone were to come along and add a great deal more information to those articles? And, conversely, if the concern is about it being difficult for users to find information that's spread out among different places: even if we're to assume that's true, would the problematic status quo really be preferable? And again, if all the districts are named, described, and wikilinked in Buffalo#Districts, in much the same way as they are in Chicago#Districts, and if all the attractions prominent enough to be name-checked in Buffalo#See include information about what district they can be found in, where exactly does the confusion for the reader come in? To me that setup seems straightforward almost to a fault.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:23, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for missing the fact that "Art and art supplies" included galleries. I would not put them in the same category as art supply stores, because people don't usually visit art supply stores just to look at art supplies and not buy them, whereas large numbers of people visit art galleries just to look at shows.

I am not going to discuss every point you made, but I want to focus on one thing in particular:

And, conversely, if the concern is about it being difficult for users to find information that's spread out among different places: even if we're to assume that's true, would the problematic status quo really be preferable?

Yes, the problem is that people unfamiliar with Buffalo are likely to have no idea which article to look in for what. In comparing Buffalo to Paris, please note that <<Paris par arrondissement>> books of maps are standard fare, so it is quite convenient and easy for a large number of visitors to use those traditional divisions of Paris.

I would suggest subdividing listings into more subcategories for greater ease in reading before creating more than 10 or so district articles for Buffalo. Maybe, in the end, creating all the districts you propose might be the best of a series of problematic choices, but has it really come to that yet? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:40, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

But long blocks of listings aren't the primary problem I'm trying to solve here. It's total article length that concerns me most. Breaking down listing sections isn't going to solve that; in fact, the addition of more section headers and introductory text for sections might only undo much of the progress we make with weeding out Yellow Page-y or non-travel-oriented listings.

Look, I don't want to outright dismiss the concerns of those who say this all would be tough for readers to navigate, because there are some valid points being made. But I do think many of us are making a mountain out of a molehill with this issue. There are solutions, I am convinced, that can make the proposed new districts breakdown work. For instance, for the very prominent attractions name-dropped directly in Buffalo#See: rather than simply mentioning in prose which district the listing can be found in, we might use a direct wikilink to speed up the process. In other words, instead of something like:

• Located in the East Side neighborhood of Humboldt Park, the Buffalo Museum of Science contains a host of interactive exhibits bringing science to life for people of all ages.

…we could have…

• The Buffalo Museum of Science contains a host of interactive exhibits bringing science to life for people of all ages., with the redlink directed to Buffalo/East Central#See.

That should be more than sufficient for those who are just looking for the basics. For those who want to zoom in a little bit and explore individual neighborhoods in a more in-depth way, there is a detailed map and copious introductory information in Buffalo#Districts - more than in Chicago#Districts, and far more than in Paris#Districts - that describes (or can be tweaked to describe) the individual districts in enough detail for readers to get a sense of what they're about and how they align with what kind of experience they as travellers are looking for. And, for those who come armed with some prior knowledge of Buffalo and already know what neighborhood or district they're interested in, the component district articles of each 7±2 breakdown unit in Buffalo#Districts would be listed and linked, much as they are in Chicago#Districts, as well as being labelled on the map.

To conclude, I also want to say that I find it rather pointless to be bickering back and forth about the fine details of a redistrictification process that's not going to begin for at least another year. I wonder if the reason behind the differences in opinion about the amount of detail in the Buffalo articles or how many districts we should have doesn't have to do with the fact that we're speaking in hypothetical abstractions rather than about something that exists currently and we know for sure what it looks like. I think the best answer at this point might be to put this discussion to bed for now while I work on more pressing issues like Gaspé Peninsula, and then when the time comes just plunge forward and give this a try. I suspect that once people see new-school Buffalo district articles that contain a lot of detailed and interesting information yet are of a refreshingly manageable size relative to the current ones, and once they see a main Buffalo article that interacts with those district articles in such a way that it manages a daunting breakdown in a user-friendly way, a lot of these concerns will be allayed. And, conversely, I might be wrong too, in which case we remember that part of plunging forward is the knowledge that there's nothing that can be done on Wikivoyage that can't be undone.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:05, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, some undoing is easier than others, but it's a good point. I just wish we had more data on how an actual traveler uses this guide. Powers ^(talk) 15:16, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Food trucks

I change the web address for The Whole Hog and The Roaming Buffalo as the websites are not active any more. Facebook pages are still there but not convinced the business is still running. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:38, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

This has been on my list of things to update for awhile. I'm a bit busy in my offwiki life for the next week or so, but I'll put this on the front burner for when I get back. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 12:51, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Amusing? Relevant?

Big stink in Buffalo but that's a good thing Pashley (talk) 19:03, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Win a trip?

A Buffalo company wants to give you a free trip there this winter. Pashley (talk) 11:04, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Light Rail on Dynamic Maps

I know the w:Buffalo Metro Rail is not much of a "system", but can we still make it show up on dynamic maps where relevant? Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:22, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

"One line running along Main Street between Perry Street and UB's South Campus" is a straightforward enough concept that one wonders what additional information would be gleaned from putting it on a map. When the line is expanded north into Amherst and south into the Cobblestone District, as planned, we can revisit the issue, but IMO it would be pointless to do so now, especially since the current districting scheme, and therefore all of Buffalo's dynamic maps, are soon to be a thing of the past. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:32, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Buffalo progress report, and a call for help with editing static maps

Swept in from the pub

As many of you probably know, my most recent work on Wikivoyage has centered around shortening up some of the overly long descriptive blurbs for the POIs in the Buffalo district articles. Connected to that, I'm happy to announce that today, for the first time since 2012, the longest article on Wikivoyage is neither Buffalo itself nor one of its districts. This is an important milestone. I'm passionate about drawing attention to my hometown as a worthwhile tourist destination, but at the same time, it's absolutely ridiculous that an article covering an off-the-beaten-path district of a midsized, unremarkable American city once contained more content than Japan, London, China and even the United States itself.

But this business of shortening blurbs is only Phase One of a two-phase project. By the time the project is completed, the current district articles will no longer exist, at least not in their present form. The new district breakdown I have planned for Buffalo cribs from Chicago's, wherein some of the items on the list in the Districts section represent not articles per se, but groupings of adjacent districts each with their own article. This allows for the possibility of having a Huge City divided into more than 9 districts while still respecting the 7±2 policy in place for avoidance of long lists.

With that in mind, as a sort of prelude to Phase 2 of the Buffalo project, I'm soliciting volunteers who might be willing to help with a redesign of the Buffalo districts map. The changes to be made to the map consist of: 1) splitting off Black Rock and Riverside from the West Side into their own district, 2) dividing Allentown and the Delaware District into two articles rather than having them share one, and 3) some minor boundary changes elsewhere on the map. I like very much the map that Peter Fitzgerald created back in the day when Buffalo was first districtified, so if it's possible to edit that map directly, that's the way I'd prefer to go. But if it's necessary to create a whole new map, that's okay too.

I remember that Saqib made an announcement a while back that his services were available to anyone who needed help with static maps, but you don't see him around much anymore. I also know that Ypsilon has the necessary expertise, but the last thing I'd want to do is add to his workload. So if anyone else is around who might be able to assist with this task, please drop me a note on my talk page and I'll brief you on exactly what I'd like to have done. Thank you in advance for your assistance.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:22, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Also - I'm aware that my proposal for the Buffalo redistricting scheme was not without controversy. We can debate that elsewhere, but at a bare minimum, the issues of the boundary shifts and of Allentown, the Delaware District, and Black Rock-Riverside getting independent articles of their own represent absolutely the most important of the proposed changes to Buffalo's districting scheme, which are necessary regardless of whether the other, more contentious parts of my plan are enacted or not, so there's no issue here of anyone's work potentially going to waste. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:23, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

I could do it, but maybe in a week or two.

To my understanding, back in the WT days most of the regular users were familiar with vector graphics and knew how to draw static maps. Out of the active and semi-active users right now, I think it's just me, LtPowers, Shaundd, Erwin and TagaSanPedroAko who can draw them. Even as we nowadays use dynamic maps (which didn't exist here a few years ago) and as such not every map needs to be drawn by hand, it would still be nice if a few more regular users would be able to make maps.

It's a bit hard but not impossible to learn how to do it. Five years ago I noticed we had a number of districtified cities from Beirut to Tijuana that had no district maps, and also then there were almost nobody around to help. I started learning how Inkscape works and how to create static maps and it took me a little more than a week of trial and error to create my first (crappy) maps. ϒψιλον (talk) 08:05, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

I can do it. I downloaded the map and it looks straightforward to edit. I just don't have lots of spare time so it could take a week to work through the changes (depending on volume) and I'd also like to finish updating maps for the North Macedonia name change. -Shaundd (talk) 22:49, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

There’s absolutely, positively no rush on this. Even after I finish the current phase of the project, I imagine I will create the new district articles in my userspace and move them to mainspace only after all the new content is written (mainly “Understand”, “History”, “Get in/around”, “Stay safe”, and “Go next” sections specific to the finer-grained districts), so any new map will not be placed on the Buffalo parent article for a few months to a year yet. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:02, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: I can still help with maps. Let me know the details on my talk page. --Saqib (talk) 16:05, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Location of airport and station

What is the objection to telling the reader where the airport or Buffalo-Depew station are? The link from Depew has been removed twice, and the location of the airport in Cheektowaga has also been removed. Cheektowaga has the hotels near the station and the airport, and shows where they are on the map, very useful information for the first time visitor. AlasdairW (talk) 21:38, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

I've already explained my reasoning in my edit comments. First of all, Wikivoyage:Internal links cautions us against overlinking, and Cheektowaga is already linked elsewhere in the article. Secondly, this is an article about Buffalo, not Cheektowaga or Depew. The "Get in" section includes the addresses, phone numbers, etc. of the airport and train station, and instructions on how to get to Buffalo from there and vice versa. Anything beyond that is not germane to this article. If you as a traveller know your hotel is in Cheektowaga, common sense says to go to the Cheektowaga article to seek out information about it, not an article about a completely separate place. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:27, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Please read the article again, in this edit, the text "Located in the suburb of Cheektowaga," was removed from the airport listing. Depew is a disambiguation page which gives the reader an extra step or two to find out where the station is - if linking really is undesirable, then mention Cheektowaga in the text. AlasdairW (talk) 12:19, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Tesla statue

A Facebook post says

On November 15, 1896, Buffalo became the first city to be powered by alternating current (AC). Thanks to the hard work and generosity of a few of it's citizens, Buffalo now has a statue of Nicolas Tesla commemorating that day in November 124 years ago.

Picture looks good Pashley (talk) 02:32, 12 November 2020 (UTC) https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1131324163952892&set=pcb.1131324323952876

Sounds like something interesting worth mentioning. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:51, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Too much

I'm a lucky guy, in that I am fortunate enough to get to visit Buffalo, New York. Researching my trip, this is the first time I've not found this website useful. I've had to turn to Reddit, of all godforsaken places, to actually figure out what to see and do on my trip to Buffalo.

Buffalo is a small city, not a Huge City as we have it here. So far as I can tell, Buffalo is renown for its architecture, particularly friendly people, and its cuisine (buffalo wings). And that's it – which is pretty respectable for a North American city of Buffalo's size. For 24 hours in Buffalo, I think that's what you'd recommend. Yet this article (and its subarticles) read like they've been written by the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce (I've looked at the edit history and I realize that is not the case).

The split of this article into multiple districts is borderline useless – it's a small North American city! Particularly unhelpful is the way all architecture is split up into zones. That's not how any tourist approaches architecture. We're on limited time. Give us the highlights and on the way we'll get the rest. Most of the highlights are buried. City Hall! (Seriously go to the correct district and then use your browser's find feature to find this... it's crazy, why is this buried?). County Hall! Silo City! That bird pier or whatever they call it.

I propose that we make a concerted effort to shrink Buffalo into a single (non-huge) city article. Full credit and admiration to the editor that put the previous work in, but it has resulted in a set of articles that are outlandishly outsized relative to the travel-weight of their subject, along with a useless mesh of blabbery ("well you might think that xyz neighborhood was bad but now its good, and..." WHO CARES). Brycehughes (talk) 03:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, please. I don't have a problem with the districts (FWIW, I split Canberra into districts a while back, too), but I do have a problem with the excess fluff in this article (and really dislike that this is the tone needed for a star article – I favor brevity and find it more useful than fluff or the so-called "lively travel writing"). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

The main contributor to all the Buffalo districts has also been inactive on Wikimedia for over a year now (after being desysopped over on Commons due to misuse of admin tools) and here for the last 3 years, which means that large portions of the article may also be out of date, especially so given how overlistified this article is. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:43, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to support subtracting information. I think the solution could be to provide improved summaries, not to remove listings someone else might find interesting. Also, for the record, as a Manhattanite, I definitely would call Buffalo a sizable city - not huge (to my mind, Chicago might be the only city in the U.S. other than New York to have a comparable big-city feel), but big. w:Buffalo–Niagara Falls Metropolitan Area: "As of the 2020 U S. census, the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) had a population of 1,166,902." The question of whether the text of listings should be edited is different. It's always good to edit for brevity when that doesn't subtract important or very interesting information and makes the text more elegant and readable. Note the caveats in that sentence. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:32, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: Ground Zero (talk) 11:51, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I think he uses Andre Carrotflower (talk · contribs) now, though I would not be surprised if that also doesn't garner a response (but they did make 1 edit to enwiki today). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:57, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

There are some listings in the Buffalo articles that are so little-relevant to travellers, they seem to violate WV:relevant (like a framing service), and I think we shouldn't hesitate to remove those, like we would in any other article.

But setting those aside, I'm not sure what to do about the broader issue. I share the feeling that the Buffalo articles seem overly detailed. Most "huge cities" are places where visitors can easily spend a week or more and explore a new neighborhood every day (one day in the Financial District, another day in Williamsburg, the next in the Theater District), and district articles can be helpful for approaching the destination in manageable chunks in that case. I don't know whether Buffalo is big enough for that kind of visit to make sense. The colorful prose in the listings is nice, but it adds up to a lot to read for a short visit, especially when there are so many POIs listed.

Improved summaries and editing for brevity might help. It seems like a shame to completely remove information that's useful to some significant number of travellers, even if it's not relevant to most. It's possible some specialized information could be usefully split into travel topics like Historic churches of Buffalo's East Side. I'm planning to visit Buffalo in a few months, so I might have a more informed opinion then. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:00, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

In the interesting #Buffalo Districts Revisited discussion higher up on this page, User:ButteBag says 'I do think Wikivoyage should showcase "The Classics" found in other guides, while affording unlimited space to hold the "Deep Cuts" that are often left out.' That sounds right to me. Maybe the question here isn't so much what information to remove, but rather how to edit and organize these articles so that they're useful both to a road-tripper who's stopping in Buffalo for a day (that'll be me in a few months) and to a slow-traveller who's spending two weeks exploring the city's nooks and crannies. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:09, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Agree that it's more an organization issue. The prose is, well, flowery, but that can easily be dealt with without information loss. I don't think districts are the way to go here – Buffalo's simply not big enough to make that useful for a traveller (in terms of pop, the metro area is 50th in the USA behind Fresno and Grand Rapids). Whatever the end result for this article set might be, the first step would be to make this main article useful by bringing the chief attractions, eats, etc., in from the district articles. It will be redundant (but also perhaps not as redundant as one might think, given that these highlights tend to be buried by prose in the district articles), but it's at least a first step. Brycehughes (talk) 14:52, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Longer term I'd propose a more topical arrangement, if information loss is a concern. Architecture of Buffalo seems like a no-brainer, for example. I don't know what to do about the expansive text in the Understand sections of the district articles (maybe a History of Buffalo article? But we're not Wikipedia!). I've spent a decent amount of time on the website over the years, and this article (set) is a real outlier in terms of organization and prose. I know others might disagree, but I find the writing style impenetrably boring. (I'm not saying this as any sort of writing authority; I'm saying this as a basic reader and traveller.) Even trying to read the discussions above my eyes glaze over – AndreCarrotflower seems to make a competitiveness argument for continuing their pet project. We can't compete if we bury useful information in dense prose; that is not our competitive advantage. Our competitive advantage is that this is an open wiki that attracts thousands of editors around the world, and not only is this article (set) impenetrable to read, it's impenetrable to edit as well. Brycehughes (talk) 16:35, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

It's also a star article which means that not much can be done to the organization either. I'd be open to starting a destar nom for this very reason. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:43, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

However, the district articles aren't star articles so we're still allowed to trim large portions of them without breaking policy. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:47, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the most efficient approach would be to work from the centre to the periphery (i.e. get the main article in shape first). It sounds like a destar nom would need to be the first step then. Brycehughes (talk) 14:18, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's true that star articles can't be significantly edited and reorganized. We should be careful, though, that the result isn't less elegant than the existing version. It's possible that before any drastic steps are taken, someone might want to put an alternate version in their userspace for comment and possible compromises. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:22, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I'd say the key would be to avoid drastic steps (at least without prior discussion) and to ensure edits are incremental, comprehensible and easily-revertible. What I'd personally like to tackle, at first, is 1) the fluffiness of the prose in the main article and 2) converting prose to list formats where appropriate in the main article. Given that this can be done without significant information loss, then I assume we don't need to destar the article beforehand. Converting the district organization to a topical organization is a drastic step and I assume would require a destarring first. Brycehughes (talk) 15:55, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

(I'd also like to adjust the tone of the article somewhat, as it currently reads as almost pure boosterism at the expense of fairness.) Brycehughes (talk) 16:03, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

All of this sounds reasonable. Go ahead. I'll try to have a look now and then and see what I think, but from memory of reading these articles before, I think there is room for some edits for brevity, etc. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:21, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I shared almost identical sentiments a year ago (not necessarily Buffalo page itself, but the overall hierarchy structure across multiple pages). The answer that I got was that condensed tourist routes/layover guides often fall under "Personal itineraries" and frowned upon (archived discussion can be found here). I agree with Brycehughes that the current format is bloated and doesn't inform readers what the highlights are, especially if the readers have limited time to spend in a city. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 17:03, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

One of the benefits of an online guide is a lack of space limitations. However, when it's clear what the highlights are, such as in Siena, it's helpful to travelers to highlight them. Sometimes, that's difficult to impossible, as for example, you would get a lot of arguments about what the highlights of a visit to a city like Tokyo, New York, London or Rome would be, since there are so many high-level choices and people have different priorities, but some kind of attempt to highlight some things in "See" and "Do" is worthwhile, even if it's not a list of all of the greatest sights or activities.

So is it easy to get agreement on what the highlights of a visit to Buffalo would be? For the record, I liked my 2 visits to Buffalo in the 90s and I think early 2000s, but to me, the highlight of a visit to that area is to go to Niagara Falls, particularly the Canadian side. In Buffalo, I really enjoyed the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, so I'd consider that a top thing to do for anyone who appreciates modern (including classic Modernist) art, but otherwise, I just liked the architecture downtown and hung out with a friend in the neighborhood near SUNY-Buffalo and enjoyed the neighborhood. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:19, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a matter of proportionality. I don't mind district articles per se. They make sense for genuinely huge cities, at least insofar as a method of article subdivision is necessary. I've used our huge city city articles many times for personal travel planning. But Buffalo is not a huge city by any measure – population, cultural impact, tourist numbers, etc. The quantity of information (along with non-informative fluff) presented in this article set is far out of proportion to Buffalo's travel "gravity". Subdividing an article for a city like Buffalo is indicative of poor editorial practice – the editing part, not just the writing part. The disproportionate size waters down the quality of the article, leaving us with a whole lot of esoterica presented on equal footing with more salient information rendering it a somewhat useless article for even a traveller that was will to spend a week in Buffalo and trying to decide what to do, where to eat, etc. I sympathize with the sentiment that we don't want "personal itineraries" or "highlight" sections, but we don't list every restaurant in a city – there is a judgement call along the way, an editorial threshold that we set. This article set has gone well beyond that threshold. Brycehughes (talk) 17:53, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

But should we have a thread to try to get a consensus on what the highlights of a visit to Buffalo are? I'm reluctant to remove listings that might be interesting to someone. Eliminating or shortening background is generally something I'm more sympathetic to, but is there a possibility of listing main sights and then secondary sights, such as is done in the Siena article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:58, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, probably. Personally, I need to get a bit more familiar with the article(s) (which should happen organically as I work on the less-drastic stuff I described above). Topical articles would allow us to avoid a huge amount of information loss, although we'd still need to decide what to list in the main article – note that a lot this work has already been done for us, it's just buried in prose in the main article. (On a personal note, the amount of time I'd be able to devote to a future drastic reorganization is up in the air right now, depending on work and attention-deficit factors.) Brycehughes (talk) 18:06, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Totally understood. I've also been fairly busy, but I'll be happy to participate in this work. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:20, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I see that I've once again been pinged.

The short version of my response is as follows: I don't care, do as you wish. And you can feel free to assume that will be my answer for anything else you may want to ping me about.

The longer version: there are several reasons why I'm inactive and this is an example of probably the biggest one. Over time, I found it increasingly pointless to throw my heart and soul into a writing project only to have my editorial decisions arbitrarily questioned and overruled with no recourse. It's true that I occasionally engage in some low-stakes Wikignoming at en.wp, but ask for any serious prosecraft, I do that independently now, and seldom on the subject of travel (more often on architecture and local history). And I operate in a world where the buck stops with me, and I don't have to justify to anybody else my decision to use a particular turn of phrase, to organize my thoughts a particular way, to include this or exclude that. And I can't even tell you how much less stressful that is for me. So - and I say this with the utmost gratitude for the opportunity to hone my craft here, and with the utmost respect for those I worked with in the past who may still be reading this - I would ask you to please leave me to that world, rather than dragging me back to the bad old days of knowing damn well that I'm right but having to argue the point anyway.

-- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 22:34, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Where can we see examples of your current writing? I will say that you might not be overruled with no recourse if you chose to participate in this discussion, but that aside, I always liked your writing, even when I, too, wondered if it were too detailed for Wikivoyage at times.

All the best,

Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:41, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

"damn well that I'm right but having to argue the point anyway" – but were you? If you are the only person who feels that way with this article, maybe it's just you (which doesn't necessarily make it "right", and that's subjective anyway). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:45, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

To be fair, consensus can be wrong, too, and demonstrably has been numerous times. There are different styles and different ways of doing things. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:14, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Also, I have to say, Andre was one of the best writers here, in my opinion, so while it's entirely reasonable to copy edit for brevity, etc., I don't want us to end up with drily descriptive prose. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:43, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think anybody wants that. Lively and concise aren't mutually exclusive. Brycehughes (talk) 23:52, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, I try for both, though I don't always succeed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:24, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I like both, too, but significantly favor conciseness over liveliness. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:36, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: Yeah, you're right, especially as I've experienced several times on this site from many of its older users (not you, of course!) unwilling to follow the Universal Code of Conduct and other WMF policies. But I guess that's a tangent and discussion for another day. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:40, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I sincerely respect and admire the work Andre put into this article. Open wikis are a tough business. Hopefully I don't sound trite, but I find it far more fulfilling to consider my labor as part of a volunteer team effort to craft something ever-evolving, rather than building a repository for my work. Brycehughes (talk) 23:50, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't want to undercut the main thrust of my earlier comment (i.e. please don't ping me anymore). But because my comment probably came off nastier than I intended, let me clarify a few things.

1) My gripes about my editorial decisions being overruled were meant in a more general context, not with regard to any particular incident that may have happened during my time here. The bottom line is that my experience at Wikivoyage taught me that I'm not temperamentally suited for collaborative creative projects. Here, content ownership is anathema and a lot of energy is expended bickering back and forth with other editors about minutiae, and the more seriously I took my writing, the more I realized how important the former is to me and how much I loathe the latter.

2) That being said, Brycehughes is not wrong when he calls Wikivoyage's Buffalo content a longwinded, poorly organized mess. You can add "outdated", as well, as it hasn't been substantially edited since COVID-19. I mentioned "several reasons" why I am no longer active, and another one was my gradual, overwhelming realization of how bloated the articles were and how much work was necessary to get them where they needed to be. If memory serves, toward the end of my period of activity here, I sort of halfheartedly tried to address the problem by shortening the blurbs in the listings, which helped some but not enough. The real problem, of course, was the overall number of listings. Granger is also correct in noting how little relevance many of the listings have with regard to tourism.

3) Brycehughes is also not wrong to say that "huge city" is a weird way to describe Buffalo. It's a product of the fact that that's what the template is called that goes on city articles that are divided into districts. That bit of verbiage should probably be rethought. As another example: Providence (Rhode Island), which is an even smaller city than Buffalo, is described the same way at Wikivoyage for the sole reason that it, too, is divided into districts.

3a) However, I think un-districtifying the article would be an overreaction. Generally speaking, the deciding factor in whether to subdivide an article hinges on how many "See" and "Do" listings each district would contain, and the Buffalo district articles each have more than enough to justify their existence. As I mentioned above, probably 90% of the content in the other sections in superfluous (and, again, also horrifically outdated) and could be nuked.

4) Ikan asked about my current writing work. You can pretty much draw a straight line from Buffalo to Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side to my work at Commons to Western New York Architecture Deep Cuts, which currently exists as a photo collection on Flickr but will be launching as a blog in the next couple of months.

-- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 23:58, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I look forward to reading that, and thanks for giving us some commentary and guidance. I miss having you around, but I'm happy you are able to be fulfilled elsewhere and wish you well in your life and all your endeavors! Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:24, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

One other thing, I know you [Andre] had great intentions, but one thing I cannot help but notice is Buffalo/East Side#History, which is 17,289 bytes alone (not for a section, but a subsection!). Is there any way you could cut this down, because I doubt most readers would have the patience to read through that entire thing. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:31, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I want to unpack this further and hear what Brycehughes's ideas about how we can highlight top attractions for tourists who are short on time. Day tourists are a thing and we should serve these travellers too. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 15:47, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't have a ton to say about that in the general sense, outside of the context of this article, except to say that if you look at "huge" cities like Paris and London we provide a list summary of attractions in the main article, which I think is sufficient, and which we need here, along with other changes. Brycehughes (talk) 03:56, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Sufficient in what sense? As a summary? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:27, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah as in we don't need special "highlight" sections or layover itineraries (although I don't have anything against them, kinda neutral about it). Brycehughes (talk) 22:14, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Architecture

For the sake of consistency, I'd like to add a few listings to the architecture section of the main article. I suppose we could consider these highlights. The other sections listed the highlights in prose, but the architecture section does not. What I have so far:

• Buffalo City Hall
• Old Erie County Hall
• Guaranty Building

There are a ton of buildings that could go here and that we'd have to sift through, but what we include depends on how we decide to organize the article in the future. For now, are there others must-haves in here? (Also let me know if you object to the listings, etc.). Thanks. Brycehughes (talk) 00:57, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

This is exactly the kind of thing that's gonna draw me back in. County Hall is impressive but not quite a highlight, in my opinion. The other two are definitely worthy candidates for the list. Here are some more from off the top of my head:

• The Darwin Martin House is by far number one on any list of architectural highlights of Buffalo.
• Buffalo State Hospital - where H.H. Richardson innovated his namesake style
• Buffalo Central Terminal - currently in the throes of a ginormous state-funded renovation but should be reopened to visitors within a year or two
• St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral - a crowning masterwork of Richard Upjohn
• Frederick Law Olmsted park and parkway system, if landscape architecture qualifies

-- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 01:07, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I was kinda hoping it would ;-) Many thanks. Brycehughes (talk) 01:11, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Not a problem. If the article covers the suburbs too, Our Lady of Victory Basilica in Lackawanna and the Roycroft campus in East Aurora both should be on there too. -- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 01:18, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps a "Farther afield" subsection. Probably won't get to it tonight, because I have to pack for my trip tomorrow to... Buffalo. Brycehughes (talk) 01:24, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Cool! Enjoy! Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:17, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Enjoy Buffalo! --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:18, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@Brycehughes: Welcome to Buffalo! You could not have picked a more beautiful day to come.

Another late addition to the list. Got to have some Modernism in there, so let's add Kleinhans Music Hall. I've got an abandoned draft article (User:AndreCarrotflower/Modern architecture in Buffalo and vicinity) that you could just copypaste the description from. -- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 16:02, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I think it's time for me to admit I was a little too hasty in saying "please don't ping me". The thing is, I wasn't expecting you guys to start saying nice stuff about me. I came in acting all defensive because I assumed everybody here thought I was an asshole. Glad to hear that's not the case. -- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 16:09, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@Andre Carrotflower: While we've had some disagreements before, I definitely do not think you are an asshole. You definitely had good intentions, and that's what really matters. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:35, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@SHB2000: Thank you for the sentiment. Being that you were around (IIRC?) for that ugly turn of events at Commons, I'm especially glad to hear that from you.

@Brycehughes: Hey, I realize I'm throwing a lot at you here while you are busy traveling, but ideas keep coming to me and I want to get them all out before I forget. Here and here are a couple of things I wrote up about the architecture of City Hall. Both images and their descriptive texts are copyleft-compatible, so feel free to adapt as necessary for the purposes of the article. I'll see what else I can scrounge up from among what I have written.

-- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 23:56, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I was; I'm of the belief that one's WMF personality does not reflect their character in real life – mistakes happen, but that does not mean you're an asshole. It's nice to see you back right as Brycehughes is traveling in Buffalo. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:18, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@Brycehughes: And here is a thing I wrote up about the Buffalo State Hospital a while back. Same as above: it's CC-compatible so copypaste and adapt at will. This is the last ping for now, I promise (mostly because my research specialty is Buffalo-area buildings about which gallons of ink haven't already been spilled, ergo not much that's useful for an article on architecture highlights). Enjoy your trip, and please do let me know if I can be of further assistance. -- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 19:09, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I probably don't have to say I know you're not an asshole, but... :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:08, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Thanks all! And thanks Andre, I will get to these. The architecture in Buffalo was phenomenal. I think the thrust of this article – that Buffalo will surprise you – is correct: I was prepared for it (having edited this article a bit) and I was still surprised. Brycehughes (talk) 03:59, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Going nuclear

See also: #Too much

Edit: Just rethinking this, even if we went with the nuclear option here, I'm going to be somewhat short on time in the foreseeable future, and so I doubt I'd even be able to manage building topical articles for Buffalo. I'm at a pretty good stopping point, and I think the main article is better than when I found it. The district articles need work – a lot of work – but then so do a lot of articles on this website... time to move my attention tractor beam somewhere else. Special thanks to Andre for his help and material above.

I'm not categorically opposed to districts for Buffalo, but I am opposed to the district articles as they stand now. They are enormous, outdated, and unmaintainable. There seems to have been little editorial judgement exercised in deciding what goes in these district articles; instead it's the kitchen sink approach: throw everything in there. Look at the Buy sections! The Eat sections!

Andre has said that 90% of the content in the non-See and non-Do sections of the district articles could be nuked. But that in and of itself is a huge job, going through the listings and deciding which 10% to keep. I'm just not sure that's practical. It would be far easier to pluck a few Eats, a few Sleeps (etc.) from each district article and move them into the main article. All the main article needs is Andre's additional architecture suggestions from above, some (non-chain) Eats, a few more Sleeps, perhaps some Buys and it'd be more-or-less a complete package – and a great one at that.

And then I'd say: Nuke the Districts. (As in, move them under Andre's user space.) We need to hit a reset button, to start again with a fresh slate. If someone then wanted to recreate district articles for Buffalo, fantastic. But if not, we still have an excellent, useful – and maintainable – Buffalo article. The volumes of information in the District See and Do sections could be put in topical articles (Architecture, Art, Outdoors, etc.) as necessary, which frees us from the District article mess but allows us to retain that more valuable information (even then, there is TMI in those sections in the districts, IMO). Brycehughes (talk) 00:51, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I'll make my decision once Andre Carrotflower gives their input as a local, since I'm not fully sure how this would turn out. I do agree with your principle point, though. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 01:05, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

He might show up (which would be great) but I wouldn't hold my breath, just in case. Brycehughes (talk) 01:09, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

If he doesn't show up, I'd trust your judgment. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 01:13, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

How many See and Do listings would that leave, and if you plan on deleting some of them, what basis are you using to decide? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:14, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

There is also a case for moving some of the art + architecture POIs to a separate travel topic. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 01:18, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

A nice thing about the See and Do sections in the district articles is that they share consistent subheadings, which in theory would guide us for topical articles. So, in a perfect world, the listing loss would be close to zero. That said, while I'm okay with the See listings for the most part, the Do sections might need more discernment (do we need every live music venue on the West Side, for example?) One approach would be to take advantage of the detail of the listing descriptions: you're often able to tell which are the salient listings by comparing the descriptions (the more salient ones being more wordy and excited in tone). Another key is whether the listing is discussed elsewhere in the article (or another article's) text. But it also might just take coming to a consensus here (on which Live Music venues to keep, for example). It sucks that our Buffalo expert has (mostly) gone, but that's a big part of the problem: we're unable to properly maintain these articles (and even Andre admitted he was unable to maintain them). Brycehughes (talk) 01:25, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The article has "Buffalo is a huge city with several district articles ...". Here "huge" is absurd & it should clearly be changed to "large" in the template. For Buffalo, with population well under half a million, even "large" is dubious. So is having seven districts in a city this size. Toronto has about ten times the population (2.5 million core, >5 million metro) & 13 districts. Shanghai is nearly 100 times the size (upwards of 25 million) & has 19 district articles.

That said, I would not support radical change, or at least not until we hear from @Andre Carrotflower:. He is an experienced & respected editor, & a Buffalo local. Clearly he put considerable thought into the current structure so I'm sorely reluctant to trash large chunks of it. Also, some districts, like Buffalo/South_Buffalo seem to make sense.

I'd likely support a redistricting/simplifying proposal, but not a nuclear option. Pashley (talk) 03:04, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

He did show up, above. I'm not sure if he will show up again. To summarize, he said that 1) he would not support removing the districts, 2) that one of the reasons he left this site is because this article (set) is a "longwinded, poorly organized mess" and that he realized how much time it would take to fix it, and 3) that 90% of the content in the non-See and non-Do sections of the district articles should be "nuked". My argument is that without a Buffalo expert willing to put the time in, fixing these articles via a redistricting/simplifying proposal is impractically difficult, as Andre himself admitted. Ergo, we need another option. Brycehughes (talk) 03:15, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I will say, even though you may have abandoned this proposal, the article is definitely in a better state than what it once was. Many thanks to you and Andre again! --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 04:44, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

We can discuss the phrasing of the notice on districted cities at Wikivoyage talk:Huge city article template, but the notice at issue is as follows:

[Name of city] is a huge city with several district articles that contain information about specific sights, restaurants, and accommodation.

We could easily change that to:

"X is a city with too many attractions for one article, so also view the several district articles that contain information about specific sights, restaurants and accommodation."

But it's inescapable that there will be some issues with terminology on this site. Note that many of the city articles are actually about towns, villages, etc. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:55, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

We're never going to be able to use technically precise wording here without compromising one thing or another. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:42, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I proposed an alternative at Template talk:PrintDistricts#When a huge city isn't huge. Actually scratch that... although it's not my preferred language, we could just replace it with "city" I guess. Brycehughes (talk) 12:52, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I would not (immediately) support the "nuclear option" here. As noted, "huge city" is just our jargon for "city divided into districts". Buffalo is unusually small to be in that category, but it's based on quantity of listings, not population size or visitor numbers. Unless we remove so many listings that they will all fit in the main article, I don't see an alternative to keeping it a huge city. I'm glad to see there was discussion here about making changes to tone. While I haven't checked all of them, many of the recent changes are probably improvements. One that caught my eye as a concern is at https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Buffalo&diff=prev&oldid=4873204 which seems to remove important descriptors in the name of brevity. Still, if that's the only one (though again I haven't checked all of them) then it's going very well. -- Powers ^(talk) 20:56, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm more than happy that those words in question were removed; most people care about brevity, not lively travel writing. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 23:35, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Um, dry writing is for encyclopedias. Did you deliberately choose to contradict Wikivoyage:Tone? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:55, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

The classification between lively travel writing (more specifically, fluff) and dry writing isn't binary. You can have something in-between, and that's what Brycehughes did exactly there; brevity does not imply dry. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 01:04, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I did mean to say fluff earlier, though – apologies for the confusion. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 01:05, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm done and happy where this article ended up. I don't have any problem with districts per se, but I think they're pretty unusable in this case – much too much information, hopelessly outdated, way too verbose, confusing anchor links going everywhere, etc. – but I don't have time to work on those; it's simply too much work (as Andre himself admitted). As far as this article goes, I tried to make my edits incremental and easily revertible, so if anyone sees anything they want to restore or change, etc., please do! Open wiki and all that... Brycehughes (talk) 02:52, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

SHB, something in between is one thing, but actually pooh-poohing lively travel writing is against guidelines, and the guidelines that call for some style and grace are something I will fight for. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:41, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

There is a difference between lively travel writing with brevity and a wall of text with the illusion of lively travel writing; much of this article is unfortunately the latter. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:50, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Brevity is fine, but let's not bleed all of the color out of this star article. Powers ^(talk) 18:42, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

SHB, I don't disagree with the rest of what you are writing. Brevity is the soul of wit, etc. But don't speak against lively travel writing! Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:56, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, I have an inside feeling that we agree on what we're saying, except on the wording haha. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 00:37, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Well I'd say this came to a lovely conclusion! Brycehughes (talk) 04:23, 5 May 2024 (UTC)