Template talk:Stbox

Consensus?

Where is the consensus established to use this template? Powers ^(talk) 18:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Is it needed? Is not changing the function of the original templates or the syntax on article pages. Only making a single place to be able to change format and style of the label in future, which was discussed in Travellers' pub a few weeks ago. The slight word changing, particularly adding the words travel guide to place was discussed in the Search Expedition --Traveler100 (talk) 18:37, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Of course, consensus is needed; we always require a consensus before adoption of new templates. In this case, I have a few concerns.

1. My understanding from the Search Expedition discussion was that the wording was going to be varied in the different status templates, while this template uses a standard wording and only varies the status and type of article.
2. Using a wrapper template like this makes it harder for people unfamiliar with the way it works to make changes, as it adds a level of redirection between the transclusion code someone would see in an article and the actual text one might want to change.
3. This template requires both the 'status' and 'type' parameters to be one of a very specific set of options, which makes the template harder to use with no concrete offsetting benefit.

I think it might be better if this template simply handled the graphic details, while allowing each status template to pass its own text in. That will be both more transparent and more user-friendly, without any real decrease in efficiency or functionality.

-- Powers ^(talk) 14:43, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

My concern about making it harder for people to make changes seems well founded; see here. -- Powers ^(talk) 14:16, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Testing PageAssessments parser function

@Traveler100, Wrh2, WOSlinker: The WMF just finished developing a small new extension called PageAssessments whose purpose is to store page assessment metadata in a database table and make that data available via an API. We would like to test this extension on English Wikivoyage by adding the #assessment parser function into the Stbox template. This will not change anything about the output of the template and will be a completely invisible change to end users. All it will do is cause the 'status' and 'type' parameters to be recorded in a database table for each page that includes this template (or subtemplates). The change would basically be adding something like {{#assessment:{{{type|}}}|{{{status|}}}}} to the template code. Are you guys OK with this change to the template? Do you have any questions or concerns about it? Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

If it's transparent to end users then I see no harm. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:40, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me, if as you say it does not affect any of the existing functionality. --Traveler100 (talk) 09:26, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

What I would be interesting in knowing is how the database could be used and what the projects intention is? As you have probably seen we have a status table Wikivoyage:Article status stats which is generated by categories and used in the Maintenance panel. This works fine and the categories and templates are also useful for more detailed searches using CatScan. What I have not figured out how to do is create dynamic status tables for sub-project, for example the one you can see in Wikivoyage:England Expedition. Would this PageAssessment project help here? --Traveler100 (talk) 09:33, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Might be possible to combine it with using wikidata to get the country (although that would mean the whole of the UK, rather than just England). For example: {{#assessment:{{#property:P17}}|{{{type|}}}|{{{status|}}}}}. -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:27, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

@Traveler100, WOSlinker: The main purpose of this database is to give tool and bot writers easy access to this information. While there are already scripts that use categorylinks or templatelinks to surface this information, such queries are very slow and inefficient due to the enormous size of those tables. Having a small dedicated table will allow real-time searches and permit joining against other large tables for more complicated queries. Also, this database will include when assessments are made so you can easily see how fresh an assessment is or only search for stale assessments. The long-term goal is to move assessment metadata out of Wikitext entirely and have separate interfaces for creating, editing, and searching it. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

It would be useful if there was a function similar to {{PAGESINCATEGORY:catname}}, for example: {{#pagesatassessment:{{{type|}}}|{{{status|}}}}} which could then be used directly on any page. -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:21, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Add the following?

{{#assessment:All|{{{type|}}}|{{{status|}}}}}
{{#if:{{#property:P17}}|{{#assessment:{{#property:P17}}|{{{type|}}}|{{{status|}}}}}}}

That's an interesting idea. Perhaps we should add a "subprojects" parameter to the parser function to make this easier. As it is, I would suggest:

{{#assessment:{{{type|}}}|{{{status|}}}}}
{{#if:{{#property:P17}}|{{#assessment:{{#property:P17}}|{{{status|}}}}}}}

That would give, for example, the article Cairo two assessments: one for "city" and one for "Egypt". I would avoid overloading the importance parameter as you may actually want to use that in the future for ranking importance. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

This has been added now. Some example API queries...

• Assessments for all city-level pages: https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=projectpages&wppprojects=city&wppassessments=true
• Assessments for all pages related to Belize: https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=projectpages&wppprojects=Belize&wppassessments=true
• All assessments for the page Cairo: https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=pageassessments&titles=Cairo&formatversion=2

Some time in the near future we will build some special pages to let people view stats and charts related to this data. Stay tuned. Kaldari (talk) 22:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I had to remove the country-based assessments since #property:P17 can return an arbitrarily long list (rather than just a single country). For example, Pan-American Highway was returning "Canada, United States of America, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay" as its country, which was causing problems with the database insertion (since it expects only a short string). Kaldari (talk) 21:34, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Footnote

Proposal to add {{cityfootnote}} to the bottom of all city articles. It will look like this:

Get in • See • Do • Buy • Eat • Drink • Sleep

The intention is primarily to create text that I hope search engines will pick up that should be close to what people type in to search engines. Terms such as "Restaurants in townname", "how to get to townname". These can be see on mouse over the section names. Will also have the additional advantage of not having to scroll back up a long article to get back to a particular section. Would be added automatically via update to article status template. Comments, further suggestions? --Traveler100 (talk) 13:26, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I like the idea for SEO purposes very much, but would prefer this were somehow 'behind the scenes', rather than visible to readers. The scroll back up function just seems like a gimmick to make an otherwise ugly and pointless-looking bit of text seem to have purpose. After all, it's not normal for webpages to provided a 'back up to somewhere other than the top' button. If the template were hidden (i.e. <!--like this-->), would it still fulfil its main function of enticing Messrs Google and Siri? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:50, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

The other idea I had was to change the format of the actual section headings. See User:Traveler100/sandbox-sections. But this would require an edit of every city page individually rather than a single update to a template, and would be more difficult to maintain. Could have a section template so that most of the text and formatting is done in one place. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:05, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Or maybe we can add something to the pagebanner, have not looked into the technicalities of that method yet though. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:07, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't know about the technical details, but it seems to me this ought to be doable by editing the pagebanner template. I don't really like the idea of what is effectively a redundant second table of contents at the bottom of the article. —Granger (talk · contribs) 07:07, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Recent major change to status box text

Swept in from the pub

This edit changed every status box (excepting dive guides) on the site to remove the type of guide from the text, along with the link to Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy. So what once said "This city travel guide to place..." now says "This travel guide to place...". We can debate the merits of this change, but since it affects nearly every guide on the site, I maintain it should have been discussed in a more visible place than at the end of a long unrelated discussion on Wikivoyage talk:Region article template. Powers ^(talk) 17:32, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not too sure about this change. The argument that "the type of article doesn't matter to the reader" would have merit if our readers weren't also our contributors. It's not as though there's a strong line of distinction between Wikivoyagers who read the guide and Wikivoyagers who write the guide, so having things as fundamental as our hierarchy remain "behind the scenes" seems contrary to the type of website we are.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:03, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Agreed with Powers and especially with ThunderingTyphoons!. Readers who aren't also contributors may not particularly care about internal Wikivoyage jargon, but there's also no pressing reason to prevent readers from coming into contact with it, especially since the status box is not placed very prominently on the page to start with. As for those readers who are also contributors, we already have enough trouble getting contributors to recognize policy differences vis-à-vis different types of articles when editing. Eliminating the type of guide from the box makes it correspondingly harder both for editors to figure out what the guidelines are for the particular article they're editing and for more senior editors to justify themselves when a newbie objects to being reverted. And I also agree consensus is not discussing fundamental sitewide changes on obscure template talk pages at the tail end of longwinded discussions that were originally about another topic entirely. Before implementing the change, the discussion should have been, at the bare minimum, spun off under another section header that accurately summarized the nature of the proposal under discussion, and ideally moved to a more prominent page such as the pub where more editors could see and participate in building a true consensus. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:28, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly about the change, and I don't mind if anyone reverts it. I'd appreciate it, though, if those who oppose it could offer their thoughts on how to solve the problem it was meant to address: the perennial confusion caused when articles about rural areas are labeled as "city travel guides" at the bottom of each page. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:48, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I can see both sides of this discussion. I understand the concern that naming remote islands, villages and rural areas "cities" isn't right, but at the same time including no explanation at all isn't improving matters. Perhaps we could create a separate template for rural areas and/or even small villages. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:01, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Having "city" articles for built-up areas of any size, from metropolitan cities down to villages, works for me within the current framework (of "small city" "big city", and "huge city"). Even if the terminology doesn't thrill me, I can live with it. How many new contributors are actually confused or put off by our use of the word "city" in a broader sense than its everyday meaning?

I am open to the creation of rural area articles which don't just cover one municipality like our city pages do, but which rather may encompass a larger area of mixed countryside and scattered settlements. Structurally, they'd probably still be quite similar to city articles, though 'Get around' would be more important, and they'd need a section similar to a district list, only without subarticles.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 20:58, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

We do have "city" articles for rural areas like that, such as Rural Montgomery County. —Granger (talk · contribs) 21:27, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

The confusion causes an issue where people will change the template in these articles about rural areas from "city" to "region", leading to mistakes in categories and misunderstandings about how to structure the article. In the discussion linked above, I brought up the idea of changing the status box templates to give editors the option to display "rural area" instead of "city", where appropriate. If I understand correctly, this might be what SelfieCity is suggesting too. —Granger (talk · contribs) 21:34, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I would support that new kind of article status. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:58, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, what I care about here is not confusing people. "City" templates are used for articles about entirely rural islands. If we want to keep a template name on the page, it should say "This island article is". Ditto for articles that use city templates and are about a collection of villages "This rural article" or whatever. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

We may be able to pass a parameter to Template:Guidecity (&c.) to override the default noun. We're agreed categorization should remain as-is, though, right? Powers ^(talk) 23:26, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I like where Granger is going in his (her?) most recent comment, but I think we also ought to explore options along the lines of what ThunderingTyphoons! mentions above about how, when it comes to the way we handle coverage, articles like Rural Montgomery County have different needs and priorities than traditional city articles. Rather than trying to create a "big tent" category of articles that covers multiple different types of bottom-level destinations and then debating whether we should call them "city" articles or by some other name, it seems simpler to separate off Rural Montgomery County-type articles into a different category entirely: still the bottom level of the hierarchy, but with a name that specifies exactly what type of place it is, and perhaps a slightly different article skeleton template that incorporates e.g the need for a more prominent "Get around" section and an "Orientation" section where the individual rural villages are name-checked. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:38, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

And island articles? Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:35, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Functionally no different from Rural Montgomery County-style articles, except surrounded by water. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:09, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

My point being that the status bar on such an article should say "This island article...", not "This city article..." Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:12, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

There's definitely a difference between an island and a rural area. Rural areas are surrounded by, adjacent to, or not far from urban or suburban areas in many cases, and are connected to those other places by land. While there are islands that can easily be accessed from large cities, islands such as St. Helena or Guadalupe Island are hundreds to thousands of miles from any other populated place and, therefore, getting to those islands is difficult or in some cases extremely difficult. Comparing remote islands with rural areas is like comparing apples and oranges. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:17, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Some islands are urban or dotted with towns, too. I'm not sure what the breakdown of those is in the hierarchy. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:27, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

A good example is Kauai. It's not exactly a remote island, as it has a significant population and tourist attraction, but there are no articles (well, technically one, but it was created more recently by someone who wasn't familiar with the region hierarchy) for places on the island — all listings are included in the article about the island. Would that region become an "island" article or a "rural area"? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:45, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Okay, I take SelfieCity's points. Ikan Kekek, if we're talking about two new categories of articles with two new skeleton templates, presumably that also means we're talking about two new status bar templates as well, which would each specify the type of article. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:59, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

LtPowers mentioned earlier that we could use a template parameter to distinguish between cities and rural areas, so perhaps that could be considered as an alternative to an entirely new article status and templates. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:05, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes. That still won't address the confusion people feel when a village has a "city article", but since we don't want to be in the business of defining the difference between a village, town and city, that's too the way it's gonna be. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:06, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

SelfieCity - yeah, but switching a template parameter and keeping everything else the same isn't going to address what ThunderingTyphoons! was talking about re: rural area articles needing more prominent Get around sections, an Orientation section, and presumably other structural differences from city articles. The simplest way to do that is to create a new article skeleton template, and if you're going to do that plus monkey around with the wording of the status template, you may as well just create a new category of articles. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:13, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

True. In that case another page we will have to update is Wikivoyage:Article status stats. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:15, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't fully see what the necessary structural differences are between a city article and a rural area article. ("Get around" is important for large cities too, and many city articles have an "Orientation" subsection with a list of neighborhoods.) But creating a new skeleton template seems fine to me. We already have "Small city", "Big city", and "Huge city"—we might as well add "Rural area" too. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:23, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

The status box change looks like an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences, don't let's make another. Creating additional page categories seems a recipe for trouble. However carefully defined, these would create uncertainties, misunderstandings and anomalies worse than status quo. The borderline examples would be feuded over with time and energy far beyond that granted to improving the page contents. One underlying problem is that WV policymaking is opaque to anyone not party to an earlier discussion. It might help if relevant statements were formatted:

i) With links (visible when you hover) to definitions of any term used in a specific or non-intuitive sense, eg “city page” when applied to rural districts;

ii) With links to the discussion that established a policy;

iii) And a date stamp of the last change or re-affirmation. Grahamsands (talk) 19:53, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Such links are useful to seasoned editors but confusing for readers. I think those who need them can fins the talk page of the template, which would be the place to search for them and therefore to document the changes. Perhaps the template documentation could also be used. But the "city" issue is a problem for readers and new editors, and should be handled in an intuitive way. The easiest is to avoid jargon. I am starting to lean towards using a template parameter to describe the "city": rural area, island, whatnot, as long as it is not region, park or any other word we use for the other guide types. The Get around, Orientation etc. can be handled by adding advice to the descriptive text in the "full" templates and related documentation. --LPfi (talk) 20:46, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I strongly support the creation of a rural area type of article. It will make things clearer, more accurate, and less confusing than the status quo. The fact that it doesn't exist may be contributing to our poor coverage of rural areas in the first place. New editors will less likely to plunge forward and create a rural area when it is not explicitly specified as a type of destination article that can exist here. Using links and saying that cities = rural areas will make things more confusing. We should use plain English whenever possible, not Wikivoyage jargon. Gizza ^(roam) 13:11, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. This is an excellent opportunity to add new articles to Wikivoyage and perhaps correct the status for some as well. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:12, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Not just that. If you look at Category:Articles needing style fixes and Category:Move listings to cities, many of the articles are region articles like states and counties full of listings which are too far and spread out to be placed in the nearest city. A "rural area" type of article would be very helpful in clearing maintenance categories and improving region article mroe generally. Gizza ^(roam) 13:26, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely. I was recently moving listings from Florida Panhandle to "city" articles and found that city articles weren't always the best fit, especially for places like Marianna and Chipley. With rural area articles, it would become easier to categorize these articles.

Many of our contributors are based in cities, which is excellent for our city travel guides, but as a result I think it's possible for us to somewhat forget what rural areas are like, and what their needs are in a travel guide article. I lived in a rural area for several years and this would definitely be an improvement for many underrepresented regions of our travel guides while also, as you said, clearing maintenance categories. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:36, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

[outdent] I think the rural area template would be good, but only if well designed. There are many different kinds of "rural areas" – islands and archipelagos are two needing their own considerations, but also whether there is one or more cities or their suburbs intermingled with the rural area, whether or not there is a clear centre and so on will affect how the guide should be laid out. This, we should have a lengthy discussion with examples of different areas, and some prototyping, before we go ahead and introduce the template. I will be off for some time. --LPfi (talk) 13:57, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

I have created User:SelfieCity/Rural area article template; feel free to improve if you have any ideas. I've combined "See and do" into one section because, in many rural areas with parks and reserves, these two overlap significantly. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:37, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

It mostly looks good. You might want to add a "By boat" section under "Get around" to account for rural islands. There are probably some Pacific island nations where you have to have your own boat. The dog2 (talk) 15:36, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Definitely. Perhaps it could be moved to draft space to make it more straightforward for others to edit. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:51, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Done See Wikivoyage:Rural area article skeleton template. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:34, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

I like the idea of a separate template. We should be clear that any of the sub-sections are optional (no "By boat" in most cases), and in larger rural areas it may be more sensible to divide listings by location rather than by type. It might be better to have a combined "Eat and drink" in places where there isn't much in the evening entertainment sense of drink. AlasdairW (talk) 22:24, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I think our policy should make clear that a traditional geographic breakdown where bottom-level destinations = individual cities is generally preferred, with rural-area articles reserved for a limited range of situations in which it's genuinely true that no individual town in a given area can sustain an article on its own. Personally, I think if we've got a rural-area article in which subdividing POIs by location is viable, we've got a rural-area article that should be broken up into multiple small-city articles. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:32, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Mostly, I agree. But in some cases dividing into city articles would create several outline articles without a chance to reach a higher status. In those cases I believe a rural area article is preferable, though a policy on the matter could help to clarify. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:52, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

For the Archipelago Sea I think having individual articles for small islands (Jurmo, Utö, Örö) makes sense, as the boat leaves you on one specific island, but for areas where the attractions mostly are away from where you find restaurants (Kittilä, Savukoski) splitting the area would not solve the "rural area" problem, you'd just have tiny villages instead of cities, with attractions midway between several of them (or with the same business arranging tours in all of them – which is a case where regional level listings make sense). Still, you'd want to do your shopping in some of the nearest ones. --LPfi (talk) 07:02, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

But aren't you talking about a bottom-level region with no city articles linked from it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:12, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps. I think these are areas where the "rural area" template should make sense. The linked articles (except the sea region) are now all city articles. Savukoski and Kittilä would be "rural areas" if that option existed, while the islands have been split out of larger "rural areas" like AndreCarrotflower suggests; Korpo and Kimitoön are about the main islands instead of also handling the islands farther out. --LPfi (talk) 07:40, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Some islands definitely function like rural areas. But the problem is how you distinguish those from next-to-impossible destinations such as Guadalupe Island, which are more remote than simply "rural." --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:42, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I've added Wikivoyage:Rural area article template. This would be equivalent to Wikivoyage:Small city article template. At some point I can work on writing some of it, but I don't have the time currently. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:05, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone know how to create templates similar to Template:Outlinecity, etc. for rural areas? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:35, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Continent

@SHB2000: This template links to "Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy#Continent" but it should link to "Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy#Continents". 82.3.185.12 16:35, 26 May 2021 (UTC)