Talk:Main Page/2019 Archive

Popes

I changed the picture of the former pope Benedict XVI for the current incarnation, Francis. If there's a good reason why Benedict was depicted, please revert.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:15, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

That was my bad. They all look alike to me. Thanks for fixing it. Ground Zero (talk) 13:45, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

No harm done. Happy new year, Ground Zero! --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:03, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes — happy new year. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:31, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Updating image at top

The image at the top of the home page could use an update. First, it cuts off awkwardly in northeast Russia, which is a small error, but one that should be fixed for the highest-visibility image on the whole site. Second, it's a little hyper-realistic, whereas something more stylized like the image used at Wikitravel's home page looks better, imo. Most importantly, it's not clear from just looking at it that you can click on a region to navigate to it. It'd help if someone with graphic design expertise could change it so that it's clear that you can use it to navigate (e.g. maybe have the continents turn a different color when you hover over them). - Sdkb (talk) 19:22, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I know you’re new here, but word to the wise: comparing us unfavorably to Wikitravel and/or suggesting that we should be more like them is going to leave a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. — AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:28, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the advise, AndreCarrotflower; that's good to know and I'll keep it in mind for the future. - Sdkb (talk) 21:21, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I prefer the look of our image over Wikitravel's, but I do agree that it could be improved. The light-up regions would be a particularly good idea. Anyone else? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 23:35, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Regarding the technical aspect: the whole thing could be replaced by an SVG to add functionality. A well-coded SVG file can have hyperlinks and hover styles on elements, but an image+map can't have individually-styled components (so no hover effects) and also has some other problems. The SVG can also be precise in its clickable areas, whereas the current image map uses rough polygons over the continents.

Now, technically, the current map can be re-implemented as an SVG, with each continent being an embedded raster image. However, doing so would not have the scalability of a true vector image. If we do decide to simplify the map, then it could be drawn as a true vector.

To make a long story short, hover effects shouldn't be too hard to implement. The question of whether to simplify the map should be decided first, though.

As for my opinion, I kind of like the current map and would be sad to see it go, but it can probably be simplified without changing the overall aesthetic. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 02:02, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Updating welcome title/tagline to better differentiate from Wikitravel

The basic purpose of the welcome text at the top of main page should be to describe what Wikivoyage is. As much as we might prefer to just stand on our own merits, the presence of Wikitravel stealing much of the traffic from people looking for Wikivoyage is a reality, and I'd guess that some fairly significant percentage of visitors to the home page are going to be arriving with the question "So is this the legitimate Wikipedia analogue for travel or is Wikitravel?" I'm not suggesting we link to Wikivoyage and Wikitravel (that'd be a bit overly much), but I do think we could phrase the welcome text to make it easier for visitors unfamiliar with the whole saga to recognize that we're the "legitimate" site. Currently, what we have is

Welcome to Wikivoyage

the FREE worldwide travel guide that anyone can edit.

and what Wikitravel has is

Since 2003: the original free, crowdsourced travel guide with 300,000 writer/travelers visiting every day.

For an uninformed user just comparing the tops of the home pages, there doesn't seem to be any reason to see Wikivoyage as more legitimate, and Wikitravel probably has a bit of an advantage with its "original" claim. The user would have to scroll down to the "part of the Wikimedia family" box at the bottom of Wikivoyage before they'd get any hint, and even that box might not be super helpful, as most users aren't familiar with the whole structure of the Wikimedia Foundation.

So, to fix this, two main potential changes come to mind. We could adopt both, or just one might be sufficient.

1. Emphasize Wikivoyage's larger size/higher quality. Now that Wikivoyage has finally surpassed Wikitravel in terms of article count (and also has more pages/total edits), we could use any of those metrics to claim to be the largest crowdsourced travel guide on the internet.
2. Emphasize Wikivoyage's non-profit status. We could include something like "from the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia" (that's a little clunky, but you get the idea).

Also, as a minor aside, I think we should uncapitalize "free", since given all the ways "free" things have been advertised in our capitalist society, seeing that word triggers connotations in people's minds of hidden catches and low quality, neither of which we want, and seeing it in all caps reinforces those impressions even more. Basically, it makes the site look unprofessional. - Sdkb (talk) 21:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree with what's written above. We should be selling ourselves as the largest travel wiki on the internet (although we need to be careful with wording, as TripAdvisor could easily claim to be the "largest crowdsourced travel guide"). We should be making the most of our membership of the Wikimedia Foundation, particularly due to Wikipedia, which is one of the most-trusted sources of information on the web.

With regard to Andre's "word to the wise" comment above, I also think it's high time we moved past being sensitive about comparisons to Wikitravel. The fork was now six years ago, and in that time Wikivoyage has proven to be by far the better travel guide with a much stronger and more resilient community. Wikivoyage has dozens of genuinely engaged contributors from all over the world; Wikitravel has a handful of real contributors, coupled with a bunch of employees, and several thousand spammers. So we shouldn't shy away from addressing why, in terms of readership, we still haven't overtaken Wikitravel. Recognising how they advertise some of their USPs and adapting our main page to capitalise on our USPs can only be good. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 23:28, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

My comments were without prejudice to the merits of Sdkb's idea. But it remains true, for a whole host of reasons that go beyond the sensitivity of certain users in our community, that the dispute between Wikivoyage and Wikitravel is territory on which new users who aren't familiar with all the nuances of the issue should tread very lightly. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:38, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

"Largest and most up-to-date". That other site is a repository for historical travel information. Ground Zero (talk) 01:29, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't think our main page needs to make comparisons, explicit or implicit, to Wikitravel. The current sentence is quite good and mirrors our sister project Wikipedia's main page. I agree with decapitalizing "FREE", though.

If we do say "largest and most up-to-date", we should be careful about the phrasing. We're not larger or more up-to-date than TripAdvisor. —Granger (talk · contribs) 03:33, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

TripAdvisor isn't a travel guide, it's a crowdsourced review aggregator. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:59, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

I think that we should emphasise the non-profit, non-commercial, no-advert nature of our site. There should be a clear link to an about page which explains that we are part of a non-profit / charitable organisation, with a link to a WMF donation page which mentions Wikivoyage. This can also explain the link to Wikipedia and other WMF sites. To readers who have only spent a few minutes here and on WT, the absence of adverts is likely to be the biggest difference, but some may suspect that we are funded by some commercial organisation (hotel chain, booking site etc) that would give us a bias. (As an aside, I see that we have had 214,845 pageviews per day in the last 90 days in the main 10 languages, and 104,643 in English, for comparison with the 300,000 figure above.) AlasdairW (talk) 23:08, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

I wouldn't be opposed to changing the text. Definitely, "FREE" doesn't need to be written that way; I'll go in and change the capitalization Wikivoyage now. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:56, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

A specific proposal

There seems to be interest in updating the tagline, but it is hard to get movement without a specific proposal, so here is my attempt to get the ball rolling based on the discussion above:

Current version:

Welcome to Wikivoyage

the free worldwide travel guide that anyone can edit.

Proposal 1:

Welcome to Wikivoyage

the largest and most up-to-date free worldwide travel guide. Wikivoyage is a not-for-profit project that is part of the Wikimedia family of websites.

Combining the ideas discussed above leads to a fairly long tagline. Is this a problem? Ground Zero (talk) 20:16, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

One observation on this is that it is a lot easier to see what words are links than it is on the actual page. I hadn't realised that Wikivoyage (in the top line) linked to Wikivoyage:About. AlasdairW (talk) 22:38, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree that proposal 1 is a little long, though there's nothing wrong with what is said. But what if we just said: "a free, not-for-profit worldwide travel guide that is part of the Wikimedia family"? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:45, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Also think the proposal is long, especially since these are used in the window/tab title, in addition to the main page. I like SC's modified proposal, though Wikimedia could probably be linked in both proposals. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 23:00, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Are "free" and "not-for-profit" the only unique selling propositions we want to highlight? I kind of think that "largest" and/or "most up-to-date" are bigger selling points for readers. Ground Zero (talk) 00:09, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I would guess most of our readers probably don't care much that Wikivoyage is not-for-profit. That's something that's important for contributors choosing to volunteer our time, but I think most readers just want to get the best information.

Maybe "from the Wikimedia Foundation" would be clearer than "that is part of the Wikimedia family". —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:19, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, "Wikimedia Foundation" is better. Ground Zero (talk) 02:20, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I'd agree about the Foundation, but I think "not-for-profit" is important because of what it implies: more like a charitable organization than a company. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 04:13, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't the term "foundation" already imply "not for profit"? I agree that being large and up-to-date are more significant pros for readers, while potential editors will be more likely drawn in by namedropping the WMF. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:36, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Everyone knows Wikipedia (at least by name), but WMF? I think a wording that associates to the "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" on Wikipedia has its own merits. There seems to be a lot of empty space below the search box. I think there could be a short paragraph explaining what we are. --LPfi (talk) 10:28, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘The problem I see is that, with the current picture, that would put the text right over Asia (at least on my screen). --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:16, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Odd. I have the search box on the left and Asia to the right, both with narrow window (when it is out of view) and with wide window. --LPfi (talk) 07:59, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Updated proposal

Okay, so taking into account the above, how does this look?

Proposal 1.1:

Welcome to Wikivoyage

the largest and most up-to-date free worldwide travel guide, from the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation clause could be moved onto a third line if it'd display better that way. - Sdkb (talk) 07:21, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

It's good, but are we for sure the most up-to-date free travel guide? Is that a fact? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:22, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I like this proposal. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 16:33, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I like the proposal. The only other free worldwide travel guide is the other wiki site, which gets only a few substantive edits a day, whereas Wikivoyage is a very active site, getting lots of new content and updates. SelfieCity: can you name any other travel guide that is updated more frequently? Ground Zero (talk) 16:57, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Forgive me, but whether he can or cannot name another guide is slightly missing the issue. SelfieCity makes a good point that if we are stating something as fact on our front page, it damn well better be; if it is established as untrue, there could be legal implications, or at the very least would damage our reputation. Therefore, we need to establish it as true by some measure that we can agree on. For instance, do we all agree that Tripadvisor is not a travel guide? Because that is certainly a largely platform that gets many more contributions than we do. How often do the online versions of Lonely Planet, Rough Guide et al get updated? Probably not as often as ours, but it would be as well to find out.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:26, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't Google Trips include a travel guide of sorts? And there are certainly parts of the Lonely Planet website that are more up-to-date than Wikivoyage. It's far from clear to me that this statement is true. Even if it is true, it sounds a little like an advertisement. I'd also prefer to keep "anyone can edit", which echoes Wikipedia and implicitly welcomes the reader to contribute. —Granger (talk · contribs) 02:21, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

TripAdvisor calls itself "the World's Largest Travel Site", not "travel guide". It has "travel guides" as part of its site. Some are "commissioned" and others are "user-written". The user-written guides seem to be a short blurb about a chosen theme with a bunch of links to sites, as opposed to the sort to structured, comprehensive guide that we are writing. Take a look at the "guides" for London. I think that "legal implications" is not a credible threat. "Most up-to-date" is not the sort of description that a court would take exception to, like "best coffee in the world" or "most fun you can have". I do think it is defensible though, or I would not have proposed it.

Google Trips does not have as much information as Wikivoyage, and does not get edited as often as Wikivoyage, so I think we are safe there.

"Most up-to-date" is about what we can do for the reader, not about asking the reader to do something for us. Do as far as advertising goes to draw in more readers, I think it is pretty good. Starting off by asking a new reader to do something for us is not an effective way of drawing in more readers, I think. Ground Zero (talk) 03:50, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I think that we have reasonable grounds for saying "the largest and most up-to-date". It would be better if there was an external source that had reviewed our site and would back this up ("as reviewed in abc newspaper on xx/yy/zz"), but I don't think that is legally necessary - there are sufficient grounds for believing it to be the case that it would be hard to argue that we were fraudulently misrepresenting our site. Both terms are open to some interpretation as to the exact meaning - is "largest" to mean "the most bytes of text", "the most bytes including images and maps" or "the most sq km that have some text describing travel in them" etc. AlasdairW (talk) 14:35, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I think there's a big difference between saying "best coffee in the world" and "most up-to-date...travel guide". "Best" is an opinion, "most up-to-date" is either a fact ... or a lie. If it's not true, I agree with Granger and TT that it could be a problem for us. It would be great if we could say that we were the most up-to-date travel guide, but with Lonely Planet and Tripadvisor being much larger sites, we should be careful about any text that implies that WV is bigger/more edited than those sites are.

I absolutely agree with TT that we really need to make sure what we say on our homepage is true. Many people see our homepage, quite possibly including employees of Tripadvisor and Lonely Planet. For all we know, there could be employees of these companies reading this discussion as it progress at this very moment (though I doubt that).

Also, I'm not sure about calling ourselves the "largest" travel guide. It would be great if definitely true, but again I could imagine that Tripadvisor and Lonely Planet could have trouble with that language. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:04, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

What you're saying rings true to me. I wouldn't want to see us sloganeer misleadingly. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:31, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Except that TripAdvisor isn't a travel guide, and Lonely Planet's guide material is updated when it's published guides are - every year or two. But whatever. If we continue to try sell people on the idea of Wikivoyage by asking for their help, we'll probably just continue to struggle along. Ground Zero (talk) 05:02, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

• How about, #1 "a free, not-for-profit worldwide travel guide from the Wikimedia foundation", a modified version of my original proposal (see the discussion in the section above), or #2, just "A free, worldwide travel guide from the Wikimedia foundation". --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 05:06, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

For #1, can a not-for-profit designation apply to the travel guide itself, rather than the foundation? (Also, "nonprofit" is a little more specific; I'm ambivalent about the hyphen. Another tiny thing is that "foundation" should be capitalized.) For #2, I like the simplicity. It doesn't have much to draw in readers, though, which is what led to this whole conversation. Maybe if we went with that, we would want to include snippets of text elsewhere nearby to highlight the largest/most updated facts. (I'm not an expert in graphical design, but given how dynamic the main page is compared to the average page, there are probably some possibilities beyond just straight text.) - Sdkb (talk) 21:08, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

I've just created a section below with your ideas in mind. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:54, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

My 2 cents... The tagline is too wordy. Also, people who don't edit wikis may not differentiate or know what is Wikimedia Foundation. The revised versions don't seem to suggest that anyone can edit. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:59, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

I'd suggest that perhaps the text "Wikimedia Foundation" includes a link to the Wikimedia Foundation's website. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 05:57, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Voting on proposal #2

That is:

"A free, worldwide travel guide from the Wikimedia Foundation"

How would everyone feel if we went with #2 temporarily, and then from there we could decide on whatever else we would like to add (graphics, additional information, etc)? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:53, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

• Comment There's been lots of good discussion at Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub#Updating the Main Page text (thank you for introducing it there!). User:Traveler100's suggestion in particular seems to have gotten some traction, so perhaps we should hold off on voting here for now. - Sdkb (talk) 18:58, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Sure. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:56, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Anyone can edit

I'm a bit concerned about losing the "audience participation" part of the tagline. Powers ^(talk) 15:28, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Because it might invite vandalism, or another reason? The language mirrors Wikipedia, and inviting people to edit is kinda central to the whole wiki idea. (Edit: Oops, I missed the word "losing" above. I'm ambivalent about keeping it, but what we have seems good for now.) - Sdkb (talk) 15:48, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Hm. I think you've changed my mind on this. I agree we should keep the audience participation part. "... that anyone can edit" or "... that you can edit"? Ground Zero (talk) 18:56, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

No preference between the two, but if we choose the latter, I'd prefer to use italics: "...that you can edit". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:04, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

An alternative expression of this would be "written by travellers like you". I think that for new readers the key point is how our pages are written and that they are not paid submissions by businesses. AlasdairW (talk) 14:23, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

That's a good alternative if we want to move away from Wikitravel's wording. But I think it's okay if we keep Wikipedia's formulation too, since we're sister projects. Powers ^(talk) 15:22, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:07, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Bottom

@Traveler100: You might want to take another look at the effect your edits have had on the bottom of the page. The European Capital of Culture logo is now out on its own on the right of the screen, with the information related to it stuck on the left.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:13, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

@ThunderingTyphoons!: That does not sound goo. All that is in the box, text and image should move together. Left, middle or right of the browser will depend on how wide it is set. If this is not the case I have not been able to reproduce it. What browser and OS, desktop or mobile? If anyone else seeing this please state platform viewed on and width of browser and zoom setting is at (maybe screenshot). --Traveler100 (talk) 19:11, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Let me guess, using Chrome? --Traveler100 (talk) 19:24, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Have set it back to the previous method for now. Was looking for single method for desktop and mobile but obviously has to work on all popular browsers. I see these new method changes will need to be tested on more than one browser. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:57, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

100% zoom, Chrome, desktop, Windows 10. I'll be happy to provide a screenshot if you need one, just let me know.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 20:57, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Do not need screenshot anymore. Was able to reproduce with Chrome. Now I know need to test on multiple browsers. --Traveler100 (talk) 21:21, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Main page banners

This has been mentioned before, but thanks to the Wikivoyage:UX Expedition, I think it now has a better chance of being solved.

On some screens, the banners only take up part of the width of the screen, making them out of line with the blue box lower down. If there could be a way to fix this, that would be great. We ought to give everyone who first visits the site a very good impression. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:56, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

There is currently a hardcoded with of 1700 pixels on the feature banners. Probably could make that wider but would demand higher quality images being created. Real problem is the mapbanner does not scale. That needs more work and investigation,--Traveler100 (talk) 16:16, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I see. Would it be possible to use an Openstreetmap for the mapbanner? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:43, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

What about centring the banner? I suppose there is enough of it in full scale even if it doesn't reach the edges. An easy solution. --LPfi (talk) 17:34, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

You mean the mapbanner? Well, the text "Welcome to Wikivoyage..." would cover the map. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:35, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I mean the containers of everything above Discover, i.e. that what now is left at left on wide screens. If you move individual elements there will of course be odd effects, so I'd avoid that. --LPfi (talk) 18:00, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I did not plan to make direct edits to the main page, but rather leave the coding to an expert. I'm not very good at coding. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:30, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I meant to give an idea to the coders, but there is no harm in others commenting before anybody begins working on it. I think centred images look less off than images in the left half of the screen. I suppose there are common methods (in both HTML and CSS) to either centre explicitly or put some "stretching material" in the margins. I did not look at the actual code. --LPfi (talk) 19:36, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Okay. Wikidata has a picture at the top of their main page, which might be useful for reference. I don't think the code for their main page is on the main page, though. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:15, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata uses a vector, which is what I've been trying to implement as a proof-of-concept. Unfortunately, our requirements are a bit more complicated than theirs and I've run into some technical difficulties.

I'll won't comment on the width issue yet, which is separate, because I'd like to work on it some more first. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 22:40, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Main page banners

Swept in from the pub

I think we ought to decide whether in future we should upload DOTM banners to Commons or here. I'm considering doing some banners for Southern Ridges Walk but before I post them, I want it to be clear to where I should upload the banners, and whether to accomplish that goal, I need to use GIMP or Croptool. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:29, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Another tool - ImageMagick ...

There is not now, nor has there ever been, any dispute about where Main Page banners should be uploaded. It is important that they be uploaded locally, so that local control of this very important content can be maintained. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:42, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

There's certainly no dispute in the case of featured banners, but I can't see any reason to locally keep banners still under consideration. Once they get selected, they can be copied over. Especially so since this means that banners made from scratch, that aren't a crop of an existing image, never get seen by most of our sister projects. I recently copied over such an image myself. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 01:19, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: The above comment is why I brought this up. I just want to be sure; there's no dispute. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 01:39, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

You may now become 'Wikivoyage — A Wikipedia project'

Swept in from the pub

According to this discussion at Meta, Wikimedia Foundation is considering rebranding. This means for you, that rather than Wikivoyage being a Wikimedia project, it would become a Wikipedia project.

The proposed changes also include

• Providing clearer connections to the sister projects from Wikipedia to drive increased awareness, usage and contributions to all movement projects.

While raising such awareness in my opinion is a good thing, do you think classifying you as a 'Wikipedia' project would cause confusion? Do you think newcomers would have a high risk of erroneously applying some of Wikipedia principles and policies here which do not apply? If so, what confusion? Could you please detail this. I have raised a query about that HERE in general, but I am looking for specific feedback.

Please translate this message to other languages. --Gryllida (talk) 23:04, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm a little unsure where to stand on this; I'm not strongly opposed to the idea, but at the same time we do, currently, clearly state that we're not Wikipedia. The above seems to go against that philosophy.

However, I think WV is gradually moving from the "old-fashioned" (in quotes because it's not really old-fashioned) travel guide style to a more modern Wikipedia-influenced travel guide with plenty of general information that implies, indirectly, rather than directly, to travelers. This shows strongest in many of our articles where WP content is used, and our many travel topic articles. More Wikidata content is being used by the month, and more integration in that process, and the whole idea of including coordinates is encouraging integration with WD. Therefore, I see a lot of connections, and by saying "Wikivoyage - a Wikipedia project", a good chance of getting more interested readership. The point is, I think in that last few years we've come a long way, and even made some progress in this area since I joined in late 2017, so I see large benefits and minor downsides. However, I can imagine why a rebranding of this nature may be unpopular with many Wikivoyage users who come from before this was a Wikimedia project and, therefore, a sister project of Wikipedia. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 01:04, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi SelfieCity. Thank you for this feedback. I am glad to know that the two projects share a lot in common. As an alternative, how would you feel about changing 'a Wikimedia project' to 'a Wikimania project' to address the concerns raised by Wikimedia in their proposal, while this does not create confusion with Wikipedia? How would you think of such an alternative change? --Gryllida (talk) 01:20, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Related discussion: voting no due to serious CC/SA violating on WV, started by SpendrupsForAll. Gryllida (talk) 01:27, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Sour grapes, with a probable side of conflict of interest. Spendrups was banned indefinitely from editing Wikivoyage after a short but incredibly disruptive history of participation here, which began shortly after the fork from Wikitravel and was characterized by a provocative and antagonistic series of edits with a hardline pro-Wikitravel and anti-Wikivoyage bias that community consensus held to be suspicious, especially in the wake of other, proven cases of trolls and vandals with essentially identical patterns of behavior whose IP addresses traced back to Internet Brands servers. It's notable that the issue he's griping about is a long-ago deprecated footer that used to be attached to each article that included a weblink to its analogous article on Wikitravel, whose removal does not actually do anything to remove proper attribution to Wikitravel contributors but does deny Wikitravel an avenue for site traffic. I would highly recommend you regard any contributions to your discussion from him through that lens. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:03, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, Gryllida: does Meta have a "no legal threats" policy similar to ours? A big part of the rationale behind Spendrups' userban was the Wikivoyage community's conclusion that he was acting on behalf of a company that had engaged in litigation against us that could not truly have been said to be resolved by the settlement of the lawsuit, given the aforementioned subsequent pattern of trolling from Internet Brands. If there is such a policy, you might confer with the appropriate parties about getting that account globally locked, since the lawsuit was against the Wikimedia Foundation, and not Wikivoyage in particular. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:19, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Do you think asking Wikimedia Legal about this is a good idea? Gryllida (talk) 03:34, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Gryllida - Well, one impediment for Wikivoyage in dealing with Spendrups - and, indeed, the reason why it took so long for us to get around to userbanning him - is his low volume of edits. His M.O. was to disappear for months at a time, only to pop back up again in some random projectspace discussion with another hostile attack that would sow disruption as intended, then disappear into the ether again, not even bothering to follow up on the responses to his own comment, which in our minds would obviate the need for further action. (Similarly to that: if I were you, I would not be holding my breath for a reply to the follow-up question you posed to him at Meta.) If he behaves on other WMF sites the way he's behaved here, he's not going to be a persistent problem, so I doubt it's worth your time to get Legal involved. But in terms of the amount of disruption he can wreak with a single edit, he's going to punch way above his weight, so a userban may be worth exploring. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:44, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

For the record meta:Special:CentralAuth/SpendrupsForAll.

Renaming shouldn't be a problem for us. As ARR said below, our Main Page was recently changed to clearly show that we're a sister project of Wikipedia, a site that I think almost every Internet user knows nowadays. ϒψιλον (talk) 06:03, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

We recently had a discussion that may be of interest, on changing the main page text. Some of the proposals included language about being part of the Wikimedia family. In the end, as the main page shows, it was decided that "sister site of Wikipedia" was the best phrasing, for multiple reasons outlined in that discussion, but partly because the name recognition of Wikipedia is stronger than that of Wikimedia. So, effectively, we have already come to the same conclusion, and have consensus in support of the rebrand. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 04:29, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

I have not followed the discussion on Meta and have no time to do that now, but I am sceptic. Naming all projects after the most popular one seems to me a marketing trick, not a way to clarify matters. It seems to be a popular tactic among marketing folks, but a tactic were the interests of the company, not the consumers (or our case the readers and the editing community), is in focus. I am often angry at the tactic because of the confusion it causes.

I am concerned that the suggestion is a result of marketing tactics being given too much influence, when the project family has roots in popular education, which I find much more suitable. I know we have problems with getting enough readers and editors, but focusing on marketing tactics will make us not better, but more like our competitors.

A completely separate issue is that there has been a concern in sister projects that people forget them, as Wikipedia draws all the attention. Naming the family "Wikipedia" will not help with that.

--LPfi (talk) 07:01, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree. I like being a Wikimedia project. I also predict that this will harm Wikimedia Commons, where there are already many people who think of that site as just an adjunct to Wikipedia and vote against featuring any picture or even considering it a quality image if they think (sometimes wrongly) it will not be of any use in illustrating Wikipedia. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:25, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia does sound somewhat formal and changing the name or brand of the overall organisation to "Wikimania" or something like that may sound more exciting. And the smaller wikis including Wikivoyage can then say they are part of Wikimania. Confusing us with Wikipedia won't help anyone. Gizza ^(roam) 09:37, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm OK with changing the name of the umbrella organization to Wikimania and agree on all other points. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:08, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree with ARR8 that Wikipedia is a much stronger brand than Wikimedia, and as others have pointed out, that's why we changed our main page to refer to Wikipedia. It makes sense to associate ourselves with the more well-known project. If Wikimedia isn't a strong brand, changing it to Wikimania, which is even less well-known and doesn't sound like a serious project, will make things even worse. Ground Zero (talk) 10:25, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Also, Wikimania is (at least as of now) just the name of the annual event, nothing more. ϒψιλον (talk) 10:56, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

To me, "Wikimania" sounds like we're joining insanity, and considering how many unusual wikis there must be in the world, I think calling ourselves a "Wikimania" project would make us sound as if we weren't serious about what we are doing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:17, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I think the status quo is just fine. In policy pages such as Wikivoyage:Goals and non-goals and Wikivoyage:Welcome, Wikipedians, we take pains to emphasize the differences between the scope of this site and that of Wikipedia. Having a symbiotic relationship with Wikipedia and the other sites in the WMF family is a good thing, and we're already using our status as a WMF site to our mutual advantage by e.g. including interwiki links to analogous articles on each site, managing some content through Wikidata where appropriate, etc. But I fear that identifying Wikivoyage too closely with Wikipedia sends mixed messages to newbies, especially ones who are already active on Wikipedia. We have enough trouble already dealing with inappropriately encyclopedic content added to our articles by people confused about what our scope is, and we've also had issues in the past with culture clash vis-à-vis differences in our respective site policies. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:51, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! Please join the brainstorming page at Meta, at your convenience: at minimum share your opinion of Wikipedia, and Wikimedia, as the suggested names; how to best make them clearer to readers; at maximum please spare your precious time to comment on other names or propose your own. Cheers, --Gryllida (talk) 00:58, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

• The discussion has been moved to meta:Talk:Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_research_and_planning/community_review/brainstorm, just so everyone knows. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:57, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

AndreCarrotflower, Ground Zero, Ikan Kekek, DaGizza, As an alternative to saying 'a Wikipedia project' there is the possibility of saying 'a sister of Wikipedia'. This in my opinion may reduce confusion: it makes the sister project stand out as a separate project more clearly. That's what I commonly do when speaking with people about one of the sister wikis, when asking them to release an image under a free licence. They usually understand quickly. Do you think this option can reduce confusion here caused by people misinterpreting Wikipedia policies as Wikivoyage's own? --Gryllida (talk) 18:30, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Ground Zero, Ypsilon: do you think that 'a Wikipedia project' would be more confusing than 'a sister of Wikipedia'? --Gryllida (talk) 18:30, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

A 'sister of Wikipedia' sounds better, but 'a Wikipedia project' isn't that bad. It probably also depends on how familiar the individual reader is with the Wikipedia and wikis in the first place. ϒψιλον (talk) 18:38, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I continue to feel this is a solution in search of a problem. I vote to leave the status quo alone. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:09, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I was hovering between against, and neutral, and thought it's much ado about nothing, but having done fundraising, I am 99% sure I would've been more successful if I said "I am from Wikipedia" than saying "I am from Wikimedia"... Wikipedia Travel might sound wrong (besides the fact that most people don't know what an encyclopedia is) - but maybe there is a better idea: Get WMF to get us "travel.wiki" - and similar for other projects - don't you think that would get us a lot more readers, and more and better contributions? Dagelf (talk) 06:48, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Of the two, I prefer "a Wikipedia project", but since we just adopted "a sister site of Wikipedia" recently after a long discussion, I don't think we should open up the discussion again. Let's live with that for a while, and consider further changes later. Ground Zero (talk) 14:17, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Where was "a sister site of Wikipedia" adopted, and where is that wording implemented? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:07, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

#1 see discussion here. #2. At the top of the Main Page. Ground Zero (talk) 23:37, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. The proposed phrasing and design look good to me. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:13, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Joke article on the Main page

Swept in from the pub

I can't remember what we did last year, but I assume normally the joke article only goes on the main page for April 1. I think we ought to leave it up for a few days, perhaps through April 3, so that more people can see it. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:21, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to the desire of folks who worked on the April Fool's article to have that work prominently showcased. But we are a travel guide, not a comedy site. Common scams is an article that an equal amount of work was put into and that's actually useful for travellers, and it's getting screwed out of one of its 30 days on the Main Page as it is, which is already kind of not fair to its authors. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:48, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, even if I love the April Fool's article tradition, I think we should just feature it one day. It's, in a way, the whole point with the April Fool's articles. -- ϒψιλον (talk) 17:01, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

One day is perfect; any more totally misses the point of April Fool's Day (and where I'm from, the foolery is only allowed before midday, so the extra twelve hours is already pushing it 😀). --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

We do have editors (and readers) at least from New Zealand to California, though, so 24 hours is a good period of time to make sure everyone gets to see the joke article for at least a few hours on the right day... ;) -- ϒψιλον (talk) 18:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I think that it should be shown for the whole of 1 April in whatever country somebody is reading it. From Time zones this appears to be about 50 hours, although the extremes have small populations. It should be visible to somebody having an early breakfast in Auckland on 1 April until those in Hawaii are going to bed at midnight. I know that the foolery should end at noon on 1 April, but let people share it throughout the day. This means showing it from about noon UTC on 31 March until noon on 2 April. AlasdairW (talk) 23:53, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree with your reasoning. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:33, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

No need to waste our front page traffic on jokes any longer than necessary, IMO. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 02:41, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

April is only 30 days long, so even if we didn't observe April Fool's Day at all, its DotMs, OtBPs and FTTs would already be starting out at a one-day deficit compared to how long most features get to bask in the limelight. Take the one day away that we already take and we're down to 29. I think placing a joke article on the Main Page for April Fool's Day is a little bit silly and overly self-indulgent, but ultimately mostly harmless, especially since Wikipedia and presumably other WMF sites have the same tradition. But anything more than 0:00, 1 April 2019 (UTC) through 0:00, 2 April 2019 (UTC) is a nonstarter as far as I'm concerned. Our mission is to serve the traveller, not to goof around. And, again, folks have put in a lot of work making Common scams into a quality article for real-life travellers to use in planning their real-life travels, so it should get as close to a full term on the Main Page as possible. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:14, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Andre - it should only be for the 24 hours of 1 April UTC, as we don't extend DOTMs or other serious articles to cater for different time zones. On the other hand, I am decidedly more positive to the concept of having an AFD article; I like the tradition, and wish it to continue. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:15, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

To be perfectly clear here, I'm not so much against the concept of the joke article as I am against the fact that it comes at the expense of our bona fide featured content. If there were a way to restructure our observance of April Fool's Day such that that's not an issue, my concerns would be fully assuaged. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:45, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

As the DotM, I agree with Andre and others: 24 hours is appropriate. As a Featured Event, a longer stay on the Main Page could make sense, but that would give it lower profile that as DotM. Ground Zero (talk) 00:57, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘What if we created a separate carousel, below the normal main page carousel, where we display the joke article? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 01:45, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Or have a note that reads something like, "Happy April Fool's! For this month's featured article, see..." and leave up the joke for 48 hours (since a calendar day actually does stretch across 48 hours, globally). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:02, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Maybe the ideal solution would be some kind of script that decides what to show the reader based on what time zone they're in, but I don't know if that's technically feasible.

Barring that, I think the current system is pretty good—the fake content replaces our usual real content on the main page (which is the way online April Fool's jokes usually work). It's impossible to make it stay up for all and only April Fool's Day for all readers, but I think doing it for 24 hours following UTC is a good compromise. It does reduce the amount of time for real featured articles, but only by about 3%, which is the same effect that the difference between a 30-day month and a 31-day month has. In fact, March has 31 days, so for otbp and ftt we could think of this lost day as making up for the extra day in March. (Not that I think we need to do such exact accounting—24 hours is a very small fraction of the month, so not worth worrying about too much.) —Granger (talk · contribs) 05:42, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I prefer no more than 24 hours, and possibly less. Starting at, say, 4:00 UTC and ending at 23:59 UTC seems like enough to me. I'm thinking that any earlier than that doesn't really feel like April Fool's Day yet. It feels more like "I can't believe I stayed up so late". Also, +1 to the excellent suggestion to provide at least a small link to the regular featured article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

04:00 UTC is 17:00 NZDT in Auckland, and 17:45 on the Chatham Islands, which is getting close to "time for dinner", and New Zealand takes April Fools "seriously". When considering how long the serous article will be "away" bear in mid that there are rarely suggestions that an article must be featured in March rather than February so as to get an extra 3 days. AlasdairW (talk) 20:06, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Nanotourism

For the curious, this year's article: Wikivoyage:Joke_articles/Nanotourism. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:13, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Please, also vote for your favorite banner at Wikivoyage talk:Joke articles/Nanotourism! --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:24, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Should the article (and the banner) be up now? I already saw companies launching their April Fools Day posts on social media over the past few hours. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:27, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Nope, it goes up at midnight UTC. That's in just over 4 hours. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:37, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Though we weren't able to come to a consensus in the discussion about the joke feature (both in terms of the length of time it should stay on the Main Page and provisions to mitigate its effects on our real-life features) in time to avoid status quo bias dictating what happened on April Fools Day 2019, I absolutely think we should continue them and use the conclusions to guide us on how to proceed next year. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:04, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

I've been thinking about possibilities for next year but it's actually not easy to think of something that will interest a wide range of contributors but also be a good situation for a joke article. (Thinking along the lines of how sitcoms work, etc.) An article about a pretend ghost town, for example, would provide a good situation and for many Americans would work well, but people in most of the rest of the world have no familiarity with the subject. A possibility would be something along the lines of Travel as a miser which most people could contribute to, to varying degrees of knowledge if you see what I mean.

Brexit, which was mentioned last year, could be quite funny, but I'm not sure if a political topic is the best idea. (Anyway, it's hard to know yet how it will turn out, so we probably shouldn't decide to do that topic until we know what Brexit is like — if it ever happens — and its economic impact.) Apologies for thinking so early about joke articles, but you get my idea.

If we decided to do a political topic for the joke article, perhaps a historical political situation would be better, like East Berlin which was done in 2017. Probably a sarcastic, negative article about a place would be funny since it goes against everything we're about (WV:Avoid negative reviews, for example). It's just hard to think of a topic that's appropriate in such a way — most places for which writing a negative review makes sense are bad in some ways that are not funny.

In case anyone didn't already know, I wrote a lot of the content in the nanotourism article even though it's not my favorite topic or one I know too well. Those who originally supported the topic, in the end didn't put a lot of work into it. (Which is fine, we didn't have much time to write it and therefore most of it was written quite quickly.) Sorry for saying so many random thoughts that come into my head, but I think these are some things that might help.

Many of the past travel topics (to some extent, including this one) are about complete fantasy and I think it might be better next year if we don't go in that direction again. It gets to complete silliness but isn't genuinely funny. But it's hard to write something, on the spot, that's genuinely funny without having a set of characters, etc.

A thought that just came to me is, what if we did an article that was a parody of something else, like a film or book. Perhaps a book would be the best choice, since films and TV shows are more risky in terms of familiarity and popularity. Book characters like Don Quixote and Christian of Pilgrim's Progress seem like they would work quite well in a joke article.

That's all I've got for now --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:52, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Something about death and taxes would be pretty universal. Having an appointment with Death is one of the oldest known stories, and it involves a sudden trip. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:55, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Traveling with pets#Transport — in particular, the "Laika" picture — might give some inspiration — to be clear, not about appointments with death, but about joke articles for next year! --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:23, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

• Sorry that I keep coming up with ideas here, but what about something along the lines of Travel in the 2010s, talking about it as if it were primitive? Going into the 2020s, something celebrating the new decade might be worth considering. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:45, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

  I like the idea, although I do not know whether it is viable. One could write it as if new trends were already dominating and include things obsolete already in the late 2010s. --LPfi (talk) 07:06, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• Maybe something about "driving" your fellow travelers crazy. It could be a small region: "Wall" (which is uphill from the others), "Crazy", "Nuts", "Mad", etc. One of these will have to be at the end of a bend in the road ("that whining is going to drive me round the bend"), and another will have to be at the end of a twisty road ("driving me round the twist"). ==Talk== will naturally include important local phrases, such as "Are we there yet?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Views

• Nanotourism's period as FTT brought its total views since early March to about 1,700 views; while this may seem like a lot, there were more views when the article was being worked on the most than there were views when the article was featured. Therefore, I doubt that many people looked at the article. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:16, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
  • There were 235 page views on April 1st (UTC). That's almost twice the daily page views that Istanbul is getting now, and significantly more than Siem Reap had. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:52, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Brainstorm

I've been thinking, and considering it all I think we ought to think about whether we do a joke article next year, and if so, how we can make it significantly better than how it was done this year. It should be considered, "are joke articles worth the effort?", etc. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:47, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Any commitments / agreements made by editors now can't possibly be guaranteed to be fulfilled in a year's time. None of us can even guarantee we'll even be here one year from now (I for one intend to be, but that's beside the point). I agree with the principle of holding this discussion, but suggest it be deferred for at least six months.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:57, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

About {{wikivoyagelang}} in main page

Swept in from the pub

The {{wikivoyagelang}} of the main page does not need to show in the mobile version, Because there have a button for Read in another language in mobile version, You can use <div class="banner-image nomobile"> to avoid show template in the mobile version.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 19:35, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

@Yuriy kosygin: Done, thanks for the suggestion. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 00:21, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

@ARR8: It's pretty good!--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 14:02, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

South America shape

Swept in from the pub

On the map on our homepage, the South America mapshape went a little too far north, so I fixed it. You can see in the sandbox template version. Please say if you want to change the homepage map accordingly. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:56, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I have plunged forward and made the change. If you oppose, feel free to say so and I will revert my change to the template. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:45, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Longer-term/permanent protection?

Since this is such a high-profile talk page, I'd be inclined to extend the semi-protection user:SelfieCity bestowed for one week, indefinitely. Why would any brand new user (and remember that newbies get autoconfirmed status after three days of their account existing) need to urgently start or join a discussion about the main page? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:39, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Discussions on this talk page often involve difficult technical or user-friendliness issues. It's possible that someone who's experienced with these issues on some of our sister projects, but isn't autoconfirmed here, might have something useful to contribute. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:00, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

All I'd say is notice this diff. But personally, I wouldn't mind indefinite protection, considering the recent vandalism. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:30, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Granger - IIRC, for an account to be autoconfirmed requires that it not be userbanned in the first four days after its creation. That's it. It doesn't even have to have made any edits. That's not any kind of hurdle that we need to worry about vis-à-vis good-faith users raising issues about the Main Page; in fact, if there were a way to make the requirements even more stringent than that (while of course falling short of closing off this page to all non-admins), that'd be even better. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:09, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

If we make this permanent, then there should be clear directions for new users to go to the pub (stronger than the present box at the top of the page). If there is a problem with the main page which is only visible to users who are not logged in, we need to be told. AlasdairW (talk) 20:10, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: Let me be clearer. It's possible that someone who is experienced on other wikis but has never made an edit or even visited this wiki before might have something useful to contribute to a difficult technical discussion, especially in cases where we've solicited input from Meta or the Mediawiki wiki. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:26, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

It appears that the page was protected after two vandal edits in a month. Both of these were reverted within a few minutes. I would understand the need to protect the page if there were two vandal edits every day. Although no vandalism is good, it is better that this page, which is not of interest to the ordinary reader, is vandalised than a popular destination page. AlasdairW (talk) 20:33, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

I have other things to say, but personally I think it would be better to say them within the privacy of an abuse filter or email. (I can imagine that vandals may be reading this page.) You can use the email tool to email me if you want. Thanks. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:18, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Maybe we could have two talk pages - this semi-protected page for regular contributors to use, and a "spam page" which anybody can edit. If anything useful was posted on the spam page it would be copied here. If this was from an experienced editor on other wikis then that editor could be manually confirmed, but if the discussion included IPs then it would be concluded on the spam page and then copied here in full. Admins would be able to delete and recreate the spam page if required. (A detail is what to call the pages, and which one should be here and which elsewhere, but let's discuss the concept first.) AlasdairW (talk) 21:15, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Good idea. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:12, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

It feels very cumbersome to contribute to an ongoing discussion by editing a different page. If vandalism here really is a problem, then perhaps the talk page should be redirected to an unprotected page. --LPfi (talk) 06:55, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Considering the low frequency of vandalism/spamming and how quickly it gets reverted, I don't see any net benefit from semi-protecting the talk page indefinitely when good faith anon users and newly created accounts will be barred from editing. And the last two reverted edits were quite minor as far as vandalism or touting goes. Gizza ^(roam) 11:33, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I think I'm actually coming around to the same view as DaGizza and others, and against my own proposal. Reversion only takes a second, and protection might be an issue for other Wikimedians.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:51, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

(unindent) Re: Granger's recent undoing of permanent semiprotection for this page: my bad for forgetting about this discussion, but IMO we're coming at it all wrong. It's not about the frequency of vandalism, it's about the proportion of vandalistic edits vs. non-vandalistic ones. The operative question is, where are all of these supposed non-autoconfirmed users with legitimate questions/comments on the workings of our Main Page, whose contributions we're so afraid of blocking along with the vandals? There literally haven't been any, as far back in the archives as I've delved. My previous viewpoint stands: 1) the benign contributors we fear are being blocked by the semiprotection don't actually exist, 2) even as a hypothetical, user accounts that are so new as to not yet be autoconfirmed really have no business questioning the setup of our Main Page anyway, and 3) if a new user has a question that really should go in the pub or elsewhere, tries to ask it here but can't due to the semiprotection, and then can't be bothered with the simple task of finding out where is an appropriate place to ask, the issue must not have been terribly urgent for him or her in the first place. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:53, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Respectfully, I think that's an unrealistic attitude. The more clicks and the more figuring-things-out a user has to do to ask a question or make a suggestion, the less likely they are to do it—and doubly so on an unfamiliar site where the structures and organization that are natural to us may be confusing for them. And the current level of vandalism is low and usually reverted quickly. Moreover, as a talk page, this is a "behind-the-scenes" page, so vandalism is less likely to be seen by ordinary readers than in an article.

If it helps, here are some examples of productive edits to this talk page from users who I believe were not autoconfirmed at the time: [1] [2]. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

I personally support AndreCarrotflower's recent semi-protection. This page encourages vandalism, along with good discussion edits that belong in the pub (not that the second is a reason to semi-protect). This page has a history of vandalism, as AndreCarrotflower pointed out, and we should put a stop to that vandalism. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:16, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Why? The vandalism is usually reverted quickly and unlikely to be seen by readers. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:48, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

When there's so much else to do on Wikivoyage, why waste time cleaning up after vandals when you can prevent the vandalism from happening in the first place? Why make things harder and more annoying for ourselves? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:52, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Because the protection prevents productive edits! By that logic we might as well permanently semi-protect all pages on Wikivoyage, to avoid having to clean up the vandalism. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:57, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

To reiterate, we're talking about a talk page where the level of vandalism is low, it's quickly reverted, and is unlikely to be seen by readers. I don't see how that can justify permanent semi-protection, especially when the page also gets (infrequent) productive edits from new users. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:00, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Tbh, I agree with Granger. It doesn't take much effort to revert vandalism, and few or no people are likely to see anything here. And even if they do, people who visit wikis expect to see vandalism occasionally - it's only when a site becomes inundated with spam and nonsense edits as is rapidly happening over at IB wiki, that readers start deserting a site.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:15, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

This page has received about 700-800 views over the last 30 days, but some of that number is due to this discussion. Still, it's clear that many people do see this page. On the same level, you can't expect casual visitors to know about vandalism. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:18, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

And I remain unconvinced that the semiprotection would affect more than an infinitesimal number of non-autoconfirmed editors with benign intentions. Granger speaks above of users struggling to figure out where to ask a question "on an unfamiliar site where the structures and organization that are natural to us may be confusing for them", yet there are very high-profile links on the Main Page to both the pub and the Tourist office but only a small, easily-missable tab at the top of the screen, far removed from the most eye-catching content, leading them to this talk page. So I find it far less likely that such a user would end up here rather than on one of the other two places. The fact that, over the past three and a half years of contribution history, Granger only managed to find two benign edits by non-autoconfirmed users (and relatively inconsequential ones at that) only underscores my point - we've had to revert vandalism far more than twice since 2016. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:25, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I made the link to the pub bold to make it even easier to find. It should be totally obvious now. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:29, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict)How long, on average, is it before a single instance of vandalism gets undone? 5 minutes? 10? At the very most, it may be up to an hour, on the rare occasion there are no admins or patrollers online. As a wiki, we have to accept that vandalism will happen, we can't stop it, and protecting more and more pages to stop vandalism has the unintended effect of stopping constructive edits to those pages, but - crucially - will not stop the vandal from simply targeting another page.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:31, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

At least, however, if they vandalize Carson City, it's better than if they vandalize a higher-profile page like San Francisco. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:36, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Although I agree it's better, that doesn't mean we should semi-protect San Francisco - and Paris, and Tokyo, and Barcelona, and Singapore, and London, etc...--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:57, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

And, as things currently stand, we're not protecting those pages, since those pages are not getting much vandalism currently. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:00, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Homepage map

Swept in from the pub

@SelfieCity, RolandUnger, Andree.sk: The map on the main page when viewed by an i-pad, does not display the continents after Africa (Asia,Australia). Peharps you should check on that Arep Ticous 16:36, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

If you don't mind, I'll make this a separate discussion. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:36, 1 July 2019 (UTC) Done

@RolandUnger, Andree.sk: In case the previous ping was messed up by my edits. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:44, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Dont mind at all. Any solutions yet? Arep Ticous 17:45, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Not that I would know anything about this, but... which map are we talking about - this one? -- andree.sk(talk) 10:59, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

@Andree.sk: the one with the sateliteview graphics. The one with the search bar. If you want, i can apply a screenshot in the discussion displaying my issue. Arep Ticous 14:54, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I think the one he means is the big one you see at the top of the page. (This one:) --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:43, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

{{{title}}}

{{{tagline}}}

 

{{{touristoffice}}}

{{{morelinks}}}

Welcome to Wikivoyage The free worldwide travel guide that you can edit.

The official, non-commercial sister site of Wikipedia for sightseeing, activities, cuisine and accommodation around the world; with 32,877 articles in English written by travellers like you.

Read about a location near you.

Got a specific question?
Ask it at the tourist office

Excatly, now imagine the map being cut into half... that's what i am currently experiencing in my i-pad. Arep Ticous 16:09, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

While I'm not experiencing anything like that, now when I look at the map, there's still most New Zealand and the easternmost tip of Russia missing from that map. I vaguely remember it being discussed a few years ago but apparently it wasn't fixed. Ypsilon (talk) 16:28, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Why can't we use an OpenStreetMap instead? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:40, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Would that be possible? :D AT09W^{(talk to me)} 23:20, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

I can't see why not. Let me do a main page sandbox test with the openstreetmap instead of the current map. Again, sandbox, so it won't mess up the main page. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:20, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

• I know this looks awful, but does this map look right or wrong on your screen? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:26, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

It looks fine on my screen, both PC and Android. AT09W^{(talk to me)} 12:36, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

I didn't realize the continents on the main page are clickable. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 00:43, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Really?!! Interesting. Clever, though, I guess. (Though search is better and faster in most cases.) The OpenStreetMap could be made clickable if people want me to make it that way. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:54, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Has the topic of the upcoming re-branding of all Wikimedia sister projects been discussed here yet?

Swept in from the pub

I was made aware recently that the the actual rebranding of all Wikimedia sister projects (including Wikivoyage) is much closer/real than I realized.

From what I gathered so far, it seems that the general plan is to make all sister projects have the Wikipedia brand much more prominent, to encourage many more people to be aware of our efforts and be active on the sister projects as well. I even had a thought that maybe this move is aimed at the core Wikipedia editor base to encourage more Wikipedians to expand the sister sites as well (maybe more prominent Wikipedians would help out if Wikivoyage would be called "Wikipedia's travel guides section" or something like that and would apear as a sub section of Wikipedia instead of a different domain). Either way these are just my guesses, so the change might not be that extreme.

You could read the official recent Wikimedia documentation about the upcoming rebranding here.

Does anyone have any more information about this topic? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 20:19, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Take a look at meta:Talk:Communications/Wikimedia brands/2030 research and planning/community review/brainstorm. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:49, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

This is the discussion had back in February, when this was raised for the first time. I didn't partake then, since I was dead neutral on the matter, but consensus then seems to have been to leave it for a while, as some slight rebranding had just taken place at that time. It's been almost half a year since the end of March, when the discussion then ended though, so perhaps it's a fair time already to raise the question once more.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 21:01, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

You'll see plenty of familiar names from Wikivoyage (self included) partaking in that discussion at Meta, so yes, we're fully abreast of the issue. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:16, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Is discussion still ongoing (and if so, exactly where)? If not, what is the likely next step that the WMF will take? -- John Broughton 00:06, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

The Board usually has a meeting at Wikimania, and I think this was supposed to be on the agenda. Probably when everyone is recovered from travel, we'll hear more. m:Communications/Wikimedia brands/2030 research and planning/community review/results might be the most recent thing posted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:01, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Typo fix

"is abound" should be fixed to "abounds" in the discover section. Sdkb (talk) 14:44, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:58, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

@Mx. Granger: and anyone else who reads this: remember that all edits to the Discover template need to be actioned three times, because each discovery appears on the main page for three days, so each entry is part of three consecutive days' list of three discoveries. Lots of threes in there, but hopefully that makes sense.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:26, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:02, 27 September 2019 (UTC)