Talk:Kaliningrad

Eat listings

Here is a rather useful site for mining listings. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:14, 7 September 2007 (EDT)

Train connection from Poland

Is it possible that there is no train connection from Gdynia to Kaliningrad anymore? The link to the Polish Railway website posted in the article does not deliver a schedule for said route.

Yes That connection works on and off for past few years.(WT-en) Jjtk 17:47, 9 January 2012 (EST)

Fishing village

This is very vague and not helpful: Which fishing village? What is its name (english/russian)? How do you get there? I suppose there isn't just one fishing village in the Kaliningrad oblast.

Alternative banner for this article?

Banner currently used in this article

Suggested new alternative banner

I created a new alternative banner for this article (I initially created it first and foremost so that it would be used at the top of the parallel article in the Hebrew edition of Wikivoyage, yet I later decided to also suggest that the English Wikivoyage community would consider using it here as well). So, which banner do you prefer having at the top of this article? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 04:42, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi. I don't know the city, but is the curvature in the alternative banner real or an artifact of some kind of file editing? Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:46, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Current banner shows the Cathedral, an important and easily recognizable landmark. The proposed banner shows... well, I don't know what it really shows and how this view can be typical of the East-Prussian Koenigsberg-Kaliningrad. I would strongly recommend the Hebrew-speaking community to concentrate on the article itself or at least learn something about the destination before proposing new banners. --Alexander (talk) 11:03, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Alexander, this is just a suggestion... your input and knowledge about this location is important, as we can now take a more informed decision about which banner to use. Thank you.

Wikivoyage currently has 26,849 articles in the main space... out of those articles... around 16,000 articles still need custom made banners. Although I agree that ideally, all of the 26,849 banners should probably be only created by local experts like yourself (whom would also know how to create good compositions and would have knowledge in photo editors like Photoshop), this is impossible to do. In reality only a very small group of people are creating the Wikivoyage banners in a slow gradual process, AND in many cases some of these few banner creators have never been to the destinations they are creating banners for. You see, I have no way of knowing if the current banner Kaliningrad_banner.jpg was created by a local expert or not. But nevertheless, having discussions like this one we are having here, with local experts like yourself, helps clarify what the better choice is. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 12:39, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

talk , I really still do not understand why you just don't use the English Wikivoyage banner in this scenario and concentrate on those 16,000 articles that actually need the custom banners. Do you actually look at the English article before spending your (self measured) 30 minutes creating a new banner? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:03, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Keep the original which is better and doesn't have the weird curvature. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:03, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Agreed with Alexander and Andrewssi2: enough of this business with making banners for articles that already have them. The community has already spoken that it's an unnecessary waste of time and potentially discouraging for other banner creators. The fact that it continues, frankly, raises questions of issue-forcing and willingness to "let it go". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:11, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry but every once in a while I will be suggesting new alternative banners be used in the discussion pages of the English Wikivoyage, whether you like it or not. Again, these banners are ALWAYS created first and foremost for usage on the Hebrew Wikivoyage (which means basically they would be created and would exist on Wikicommons regardless of policy or opinions of some users on Engvoy). Either way, if you still feel strongly about preventing people from suggesting we use new alternative banners on Engvoy, you are more than welcome to try suggesting that the Engvoy community would have new official rules preventing users from suggesting new alternative banners be used (for example, you could suggest that there would be a rule that the first banners to be added to an article should remain on it forever OR that banners created by certain users should remain on Engvoy articles forever). ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 13:58, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Keep Wikivoyage fun doesn't have to be a detailed policy page. You do great work most of the time, but it's been observed many times that you are not using your time efficiently by trying to make even better banners than already quite good banners that are in en.voy articles, and instead, you should strongly consider using those banners for the Hebrew site, too, and making banners for articles that don't yet have them. Asking you to please respect that some of the more productive contributors to en.voy have been unhappy about your numerous proposals to substitute banners for already good banners doesn't have to be made into a policy. "I'll do it whether you like it or not" is not a very friendly attitude, and while I can understand that kind of reaction to being called out the way you were above, it seems to me, that's been your attitude about banners from the start. Wikis require and rely on cooperation. Some people feel you haven't been cooperative, and that's why you are now evoking angry remarks from some. Nothing personal from me, by the way: I am not the least bit angry with you and enjoy the discussions about the merits of different banners, but I wish you would be respectful of the type of atmosphere your efforts are creating here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:12, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I am respectful to people when I create new banners AND when I re-edit articles, and people should be respectful of my efforts as well. The main reason I emphasized that these banners will be created either way is because they are created for a different edition of Wikivoyage. I probably wouldn't have invested my time in trying to create alternative banners, if these banners wouldn't have been used first and foremost on the Hebvoy articles. It is important that people whom think I am wasting my time, because many of these banners aren't used, understand that they are used in the pages I initially intended them to be used on.

Either way, just like all the other Wikimedia projects Wikivoyage is a Wiki in which content keeps on being developed and improved, whether it is text or graphics, even though the original creators might in many instances disagree that the new additions or changes improved what they originally created. We must remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and therefore, when one user is certain that a specific article already has a good banner, other users might disagree with that assertion. Therefore, there is no real way of knowing ahead of time if a the current banner existing is good enough or not (unless there are official rules about this). The best solution to overcome any differences on such matters has always been to have discussions on such differences of opinions in the discussion pages, and let the community consensus + insight of the locals help us eventually determine what would be best to include. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 14:59, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Am I right that you've chosen not to use any of the banners that were created for en.voy on heb.voy, and instead are going about creating all your own banners from scratch? Why are you not using good banners that were already created? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:25, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

No, that is incorrect. I like most of the banners used on Engvoy! Overall the Engvoy banner creators have done an excellent job over time, which definitely is a great help to all of the editors of the other Wikivoyage editions as these banners help set the foundation for the other Wikivoyage editions, and over time helps get the attention and inspiration to the potential editors in the other Wikivoyage editions. Although I have created various alternative banners for some PROMINENT articles (mostly banners of major cities and countries that in my opinion should have better banners on the Hebrew Wikivoyage at the very least), if I am not mistaking, over time I have mostly created banners for articles that did not have any banners at all. Either way, on the long run my work would definitly focus on articles without banners - as of now the Hebrew Wikivoyage is currently missing banners for around 200-300 articles (which is not bad at all as Hebvoy has 2,170 articles), and over the next year or two I plan to create most of those banners. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 22:51, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

While I don't always prefer ויקיג'אנקי's banners, I think it is their right to work on the field they want to focus on. This is a volunteer effort, for every 1 volunteer editing Thouars there are 10000 volunteers editing Paris even though Paris is more or less perfect... that does not mean we should frown on volunteers who make mundane changes to the Paris article rather than developing stubs. Syced (talk) 09:11, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

I will add that my main contributions are not minor additions at all - I have been investing most of my time and efforts to the creating a good foundation for the Hebrew Wikivoyage, gradually developing a core of 2,000+ articles almost completely by myself since early 2013 (haven't figured out yet why the Hebrew speaking Wikipedians or the general public whom speaks Hebrew aren't helping out). At this point in time, I tend to put a lot of effort to improving the visual appearance of the Hebvoy stubs in addition to translating a lot of articles+text segments. Those efforts also include the creation of better banners to prominent articles, and mostly for cities and countries. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 12:44, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Good examples for some of my best work on Hebvoy - the translation of the Israel article (169,025 bytes) + the translation of the United States article (373,848 bytes). Work like that would go unnoticed on Engvoy, but I just want to point out that creating new/better banners is just a one portion of my contributions. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 13:34, 1 October 2015 (UTC)