Outline to Usable Expedition

This is a Wikivoyage user page.

This project proposes that we make an effort to bring all location (city and park) articles in a number of chosen Bottom-level regions up to usable status, and then the region itself up to usable status

Rationale

• There are a large number of outline articles on Wikivoyage, too many compared to the number of usable and guide status articles.
• Some of these outline articles have enough information to be usable, they just need some cleaning up and checking that information is up to date.
• Some articles are almost empty and of little use to travellers. Can be frustrating clinking through these pages when looking into a region.
• Improving this information will make important improvements to Wikivoyage's search engine rating. Helping get our visitor numbers up.
• Will be a major step towards getting articles to guide status to flow into main page features.
• By concentrating on the city articles of a specific bottom level region, we have some focus and a clear, and although reasonable sized, achievable goal.

Goals

• To improve the quality of the basic mass of articles.
• To improve the accuracy of the status tags and statistics

Targets

• Get the what was over 14000 (current 12,196) outline cities
  • to below 14000. Done
  • keep it below 14000.
  • to below 10000
  • to below half the total 20,849 city aricles.
• Get the current 2,461 outline regions
  • to less than the 702 usable regions
  • to below half the total 3,547 region articles

Activities

Nominate here a bottom level region you would like improved, somewhere you can help with and would like other to join in.

Current project regions being worked on

• Black Forest
• Nottinghamshire
• Middle Rhine Valley 8 towns written, needs about 10 towns more, 2 itineraries
• Western Maharashtra
• Hamilton County (Ohio)
• Capital District
• Orange County (California)
• Wales
• Germany

Bottom level regions made usable by this process

• Anglesey 5 towns, 11 villages and 5 other destinations
• Derbyshire 1 city, 12 towns, 9 villages and 1 park
• Rhenish Hesse 1 city, 6 towns and 3 villages
• Alberta Rockies 5 towns, 5 parks, 2 itineraries and 1 travel topic.
• Leicestershire 1 city and 6 towns
• Pembrokeshire 1 city, 7 towns, 11 villages and 1 park
• Rheingau 7 towns.

Members

• Traveler100

What this involves

Cleaning up existing information

• Convert entries in the do, see, buy, eat and sleep sections to listings format.
• Any inline links to external pages showing as numbers, place inside link brackets with description text.
• Move listings in bottom level region article to city pages (if necessary create new city pages).

Validate existing information

• Check all external links are still valid. Correct if just page rename or new website. If cannot find then check existence of listing.
• Check if listings in do, eat, buy and sleep are still in business. If not remove.
  • Note not having a web site is not proof of closure but if web sites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp do not have a review less than four years old, assume closed and remove.
• Check all location pages in the region are listed on the region page (go to one of the city pages, if you display hidden categories you can click on the region category to see all pages associated to it).
• Add red link entries to any important locations of the region not currently mentioned.

Add additional listings to cities

There should be at least two sleep and two eat listing and at least either one see or one do listing.

• Add any attractions (see or do), hotels and restaurants you are aware of.
• If still not enough listings in each section look on Google Maps, TripAdvisor, Yelp, the towns own website and other locations for recommendations.
• Check the Wikipedia page for any other interesting points of interest.

Enhance the page information

• Identify listings that have Wikipedia pages, copy and paste the Wikidata Q number into the wikidata files, in listings editor press "Update shared fields using values from Wikidata". (pays to check the results, not always correct.
• Add web links, phone numbers to listing if do not exist.
• Add lat/long coordinates for listings.
• Improve the get in section. Search the web to check on bus and rail connections. Review map pages to describe the road connections.
• Improve the get around section. Search the web to check on bus connections.
• For the region article (and maybe some of the city articles) are the airport references and connects up to date?
• Does the page have a Wikipedia link?
• Is the geo zoom value correct for the location?
• Add adjacent locations to the go next section
• Not a must but consider looking on Commons, or even better in your own photo collection, for some good pictures to add to the page.
• Also not a must, but if page does not have a banner image then look at making one from your own photos or from images on Commons.

Ready to make location usable

• Now change the location tags outlinecity and outlinepark to {{usablecity}} and {{usablepark}}

Making the bottom level region usable

• Add or clean up entries in see and do sections, should mention important attractions but reference the corresponding city or park page rather than be a listing.
• Provide some overview text about type of food and style of accommodation in the region, maybe listing the key towns.
• Add any relevant Travel topics or Itineraries to the see and do (or even eat) sections.
• is there a local dialect or regional language worth mentioning in the talk section?
• change tag from outlineregion to {{usableregion}}

And finally

• Go to Wikipedia for the region and the cities/parks and add the Wikivoyage tag to the page there if does not already exist.

What next

• Pick the next bottom level region
• Make some of the pages guides.