Wikivoyage:Destination of the month candidates/Slush pile/2015

2014 DotM slush pile for 2015 (current) 2016

Place: Percé
Blurb: This touristy town at the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula features a truly awesome arch-shaped offshore rock formation, among other attractions. (should not exceed ~145 characters)
Article status: Guide (must be guide or above).
Time to feature: June-September
Nominated by: Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Yet another great job by User:AndreCarrotflower!

Nomination
  • Support by nominator. I'd be happy with a few more photos, if possible, but otherwise, with the caveat that I don't know the town myself, I think all of you will agree that this is a beautiful article that's well worth our featuring. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's of course a fantastic article and as such I've no problems supporting it. But... I thought Andre planned to make the whole of Gaspé Peninsula OtBP at some point (summer 2016?). ϒpsilon (talk) 11:59, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
ϒpsilon is correct - and as all our OtBP slots for summer 2015 are filled, my Plan A was to ramp up work on Gaspé Peninsula's linked cities and subregions in order to get it to Guide status, and thus featureable for summer 2016. However, there are of course no guarantees about that (when I began districtfying Buffalo in November 2012 I never imagined I would still be working on it in 2015!), so I will give this nominee my tentative support in case things don't pan out with Gaspé Peninsula. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 12:28, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Place: Grand-Bassam
Blurb: The old colonial capital of Côte d'Ivoire is today a quiet beach town steeped in well-preserved turn-of-the-century charm. (should not exceed ~145 characters)
Article status: Guide (must be guide or above).
Time to feature: Aiming for late autumn 2015, about when our current stock of OtBP candidates will be depleted. Otherwise Jul-Aug or Nov-Mar per
Nominated by: AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:00, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Something of a rare find: a feature-worthy (or nearly so; see below) African destination for the Main Page.

Nomination
  • Almost. Grand-Bassam is not quite ready for prime time yet, but not much work is needed to get it there: expand the blurbs in "See" and "Do" a little bit, add another restaurant or two to "Eat" and another bar or two to "Drink", and pick a few prominent nearby cities to add to "Go next". There's already a nice static map. This article has a ton of potential and I'd really love to see it whipped into shape. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:00, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know the town? We need people who know the town to check on the accuracy of the content. I recall when we considered featuring Dakar and finally realized that not a single person passing judgment on the article had ever been there, whereupon the article was slushed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:44, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Almost — This has been one of the African articles on my list of potential OtBP candidates, but I've been hesitant of nominating Grand-Bassam as the Ebola epidemic is just a few hundred kilometers away. The article itself looks OK to me, though — given the town's size, I don't think there's much in the town that isn't already in the article. It would be very good to have someone who knows Grand Bassam to check it (otherwise it would suffice to use Google to check that the businesses are still operating but I've noticed that's not as easy in Africa as elsewhere). User:JamesA has made the map and according to the article history written some of the content so he might be the person to ask. ϒpsilon (talk) 07:54, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding worries about the article's content: I think that's an unrealistically high standard to hold our feature articles to, and to be perfectly honest I wonder why we are so concerned with confirming the accuracy of African articles yet are willing to have faith that all the listed destinations in, let's say, Dumaguete or Ushuaia still exist with the same opening hours, telephone number, etc. My suggestion was that we add additional listings to "Eat" and "Drink" that we find on Google or other such sources. No, that's not foolproof, but it's no less foolproof to blindly assume that information in any given article which may have been written months or years ago remains accurate. That's a risk that's inherent in using any travel guide. If we were to limit all our features to places that one of our current regulars is able to personally visit to check on the accuracy of the content - or even to places that any of us current regulars have ever been before - we would no doubt have to slush most of our current nominees. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:15, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure about Ushuaia, but we currently have a regular in Dumaguete. I think part of the issue was that even in a city as big and important as Dakar, a lot of information wasn't reliably confirmable online. What's the situation with Grand Bassam? Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:36, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
My point is that reliable online confirmability of an article's contents should not be a prerequisite for it to be featured on the Main Page. If it were, then we'd have to slush the vast majority of our current nominees. If we slushed Dakar on that basis, we were wrong to do so. On a regular basis, in Africa equally as the rest of the world, businesses close and the situation on the ground changes, and therefore no travel guide is in a position to guarantee the accuracy of its contents. Particularly not this one, which has probably the most ambitious goals of any travel guide yet a scant population of a few dozen regular contributors.
That being the case, the double standard we're applying now to Grand-Bassam, and that we previously applied to Dakar, is troublesome as it effectively negates our efforts for geographical diversity among Main Page featured articles. It seems like on the one hand, we want more Main Page coverage for regions like Africa, yet on the other hand we seem to be extra suspicious of nominees from those regions and subject them to scrutiny above and beyond what we would for, say, a European or North American destination. I say if there's a double standard, it should be in favor of articles from underrepresented regions.
-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:21, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I mostly agree with Andre. If articles would have to be absolutely perfect we would probably not have any candidates here (hey, this isn't the starnom after all). I would like to see at least one DotM and one OtBP from each of the six inhabited continents every year.
Also, there's really nothing wrong with finding and verifying information by using Google if first hand information (which we of course prefer) is not available. When translating articles from other language versions I usually google the establishment, to find the coordinates if for no other reason. But the problem is when you for half of the places actually don't find any information at all online (or they're just mentioned in some travel forum thread from 2007). I don't know if this is the case with Grand Bassam. ϒpsilon (talk) 21:25, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
AndreCarrotflower, if you really think Dakar was incorrectly slushed, renominate the article for the city, but have a look at the discussion in Wikivoyage:Destination of the month candidates/Slush pile#Dakar first. I think valid questions were brought up; note my analogy with Berne, which I had previously nominated for a feature, as the article looked good to me because I didn't know enough to judge it properly, having never been there (discussion at Wikivoyage:Destination of the month candidates/Slush pile#Berne). Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:25, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Inasmuch as similar issues are at play in the Dakar article as with Grand-Bassam, Dakar strikes me as a much more extreme example. As near as I can figure out from reading the slushed nomination discussion, ChubbyWimbus added the vast majority of the listings in Dakar's "See" and "Do" section using information gleaned from secondary sources, without ever having set foot in the city. I would say that I might have some reservations about supporting a nominee under those circumstances (though I wouldn't rule it out, either) unless we were able to ascertain the accuracy of any information gleaned from secondary sources with a pretty sturdy degree of certainty.
On the other hand, the Grand-Bassam article already has most of the information necessary to be feature-worthy; the only thing we need to do is pad it a little. If we add one or two restaurants and bars to an "Eat" and "Drink" section that already has several entries, and if we expand the blurbs for some of the listings in "See" and "Do" (with no more than a few additional facts for each one, or maybe just the same content that's already there reworded in a more in-depth way), we're already most of the way there. And as opposed to Dakar, the majority of the content in the souped-up version of Grand-Bassam would still be the presumed-accurate preexisting material.
-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:54, 20 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Good. Please note that I haven't stated any words of opposition to featuring this article; I just asked what I considered an important question. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:14, 20 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(indent reset) Support, because the article ain't going to get better than this. I've added some listings and info about the sights but it really isn't easy finding information about the town online as home pages are as common among businesses as it was in western countries 20 years ago. That additional nightclub in drink, for example, is one of three drinking establishments I found using the Mapnik layer of our dynamic map and tried to see if they still existed using Google. The others weren't really mentioned anywhere (only on sites with no indication of which year they were added!). Épilogue was mentioned in a travel blog post from April 2014... --ϒpsilon (talk) 19:42, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Now there is! :) ϒpsilon (talk) 18:28, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I did draw up the map and write up a lot of the content. Although I must admit, I've never visited the place and am no expert. I just saw what was a very bare article and wanted to improve it to something respectable. All the content I added was based off available mapping data and info online. James Atalk 10:06, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Thank you Ypsilon, once again, for helping out. Before I'm ready to say I'm satisfied with the article as a potential feature, I'm going to see if I can't find more information about the listings in the "See" section. It seems like the blurbs should be longer. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:51, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not Yet I think AndreCarrotflower has a point. The listings are lacking meaty content. Most of them don't have any information beyond a description and many of the descriptions do not actually say anything which I'm sure is the result of it coming from secondary sources rather than from a traveler.
On the above discussion that we are holding Africa to a higher standard, I don't think that's true at all. We have lots of users with personal experiences in Europe, North America, and East Asia who have or can access multiple resources about locations to verify information about them, but with most African destinations, we don't. We take that verification for granted so when the question comes up about African destinations, get no answer, and feel hesitant about featuring (or oppose featuring), it may seem like we are being too strict, but I actually think it is being fair to the destination and preventing what would otherwise be a LOWER standard for African destinations. Take a look at our embarrassing former feature Dar es Salaam; an African capital that was featured with a contentless bulleted list as its "See" section and I believe most of those were added by myself to boot. But we've featured it and our rule is to not feature anything again, so if someone comes along with real experience and knowledge and makes it a proper article, we cannot showcase it. It was held to a super LOW standard as it probably shouldn't even be considered a Guide article. I haven't seen evidence of a higher standard being used to prevent African destinations from feature, but this is clear evidence that lower standards have been used. Had Dar been a European or American city, there's no way it would have been featured looking like that. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 15:38, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I added pretty much everything I could find online about the POIs to the article, so as I said half a year ago, it's not going to get any better than it is now unless someone actually visits Grand Bassam. ϒpsilon (talk) 08:57, 13 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Andre, before you start making Main Page banners for Grand Bassam, be aware that a user is unhappy about featuring this article. What should we do? ϒpsilon (talk) 06:42, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Good work, Ypsilon. I agree that the article has probably been fleshed out to its full extent based on the info available. When I expanded the article originally, I did use an old Africa Lonely Planet book from the library for guidance, in addition to online resources. If I recall the amount of content in the book, I'd say our article is even more comprehensive than LP's now, despite the author of that guide having visited Bassam themselves! James Atalk 10:12, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
ϒpsilon - I've been pulling 50-hour weeks at work and swamped with stuff to deal with in my offwiki life, so I've not been able to devote the same level of attention to Wikivoyage as usual. I took a quick look at Grand-Bassam just now, and frankly I've changed my mind - regardless of the contention that our coverage is better than Lonely Planet's and is unlikely to get better, I just can't agree that this article is good enough for the Main Page. I wouldn't be offended if it were slushed - in Swakopmund we have a worthy African OtBP candidate suitable for featuring in November, and in any event it's going to be at least a few days before I have time to make banners again. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:19, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I understand, that happens to everyone every now and then :). Just wanted to warn you not to spend time looking for photos and making some fine banners that possibly would be thrown in the shredder together with the article.
As for November's OtBP, if Grand Bassam is slushed we could feature Swakopmund then, I guess. But we could also have two African articles this winter as originally planned. I'd like to seize the opportunity to advertise some other African articles I've translated from other language versions: Nkhata Bay, Praia, Mount Sinai. If people like either one of these, I can nominate it. ϒpsilon (talk) 15:49, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(Side point: Mount Sinai is in Asia, not Africa.) Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:37, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, that's actually true. :) ϒpsilon (talk) 19:49, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(unindent) Without having had a chance to look over any of the articles, my early vote goes with Praia given its location in West Africa, like Grand-Bassam. If we do nominate it, though, the $64,000 question will be DotM or OtBP - it's a national capital, but of an exceedingly small country. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:39, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It also has a population of only 130,000. I'd say OtBP, but we should consider tourism and overall travel figures before deciding. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:29, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Place: Diving in South Africa/HMS Birkenhead wreck
Blurb: Explore one of the earliest iron steamships which now rests at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. (should not exceed ~145 characters)
Article status: Guide (must be guide or above).
Time to feature: Anytime? After all the sea doesn't ever freeze over at those latitudes...
Nominated by: ϒpsilon (talk) 18:46, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Another one of our many fine diving guides by Peter to a site in the waters outside the Cape. It's rated Guide, so all you need to know should be in the article.

Nomination
  • Not sure yet, but I expect to support. I'm not really sure how to evaluate this type of article, but I have a few remarks, nevertheless: (1) On my laptop and browser, there's one too many photographs, with the last one, which is uncaptioned, anyway, going past the status template. (2) Under "Understand/Conditions", I actually don't understand this sentence: "More information is needed on what weather conditions are best for diving this site." The rest of the subsection seems to assume that readers understand what "good" and "bad" conditions are, so should this sentence be deleted?
Otherwise, if everyone is happy with the article's format, I have no objection whatsoever to featuring it. Do most comparable dive guides use the same format, as used, for example, in "Understand/Name/Specifications"? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:48, 23 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article looks good at first blush, but the more closely you examine it the more problems crop up. The main problem as I see it dovetails with what Ikan mentioned above in his second item of concern: I noticed that there was excess white space between some of the subsections, so I went in to edit mode to investigate and I saw lots and lots of "notes to self" that Southwood wrote as hidden text, e.g. at the end of "Get in":
 <!--Parking area description if applicable: Position of parking, name of road. Description of route from parking to entry point/s)-->

 <!--general comments on access-->
I suppose there's already plenty of information included in the article, but then again I don't know from diving, and these hidden notes make me second-guess whether the article is truly complete. So I guess my vote is that I'm not sure either.
-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:19, 23 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It seems easy enough to have Peter comment on that. I have every confidence however that, while he may still have plenty of ideas to improve this article, he made it a "guide" because the information present is plenty to go there with this article as an only guide. If he's happy to feature it (with perhaps some small tweaks where needed), I'm happy to support. JuliasTravels (talk) 14:28, 23 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Otherwise we'd have to pick one of the other ~70 South African diving guide or star articles which may be in better shape. I picked this one because it stood out as the only featurable one not being part of the Diving the Cape Peninsula and False Bay area (with the hidden agenda of being able to nominating one of the fine diving articles from there just a year after this one ;)). ϒpsilon (talk) 19:12, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all, I haven't worked on this site for a while, as it is currently only accessible with a special permit as it is in a reserve. I will take a look to see if I can clean it up a bit, but I don't think its is a particularly useful travel topic at this point due to the access difficulty. Peter (Southwood) (talk): 13:05, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Let's slush this nominee then. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:28, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like we have to. And then pick a new dive guide candidate. Peter, do you have any favorite that you would like to see on the main page? ϒpsilon (talk) 16:13, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Place: Olango Island, Philippines
Blurb: Beaches, diving and a large waterfowl sanctuary, under a hour's travel from a major airport. (should not exceed ~145 characters)
Article status: Guide (must be guide or above).
Time to feature: any except N hemisphere summer; spring & fall have bird migrations and winter is a good time for a tropical vacation
Nominated by: Pashley (talk) 17:38, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Not heavily developed for tourism, though there are a few resorts.

Nomination

I am almost the only contributor so far. Both the promotion to Guide & this nomination need other opinions. Also, the article could use contributions. Pashley (talk) 17:42, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would too prefer that the article would be a bit longer. Though it may be difficult if there isn't very much on the island. Also, Olango is apparently geographically quite close to Dumaguete so maybe we'd like to wait until sometime later in 2016 with this one. ϒpsilon (talk) 19:02, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I like featuring small places, but as they're typically short in nature, but I do feel they should at least be rather complete. I appreciate the amount of work that has already gone into this article, and I figure this might be one of those place where our coverage is better than in any of the commercial guides. That said, it still reads as an incomplete article to me. I'll add my content suggestions to Talk:Olango Island to not clutter this page. In short, I think this is a perfectly usable article, but it doesn't seem like a great feature just yet. JuliasTravels (talk) 08:23, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Place: Bayreuth
Blurb: While Bayreuth is a beautiful town year round and has a UNESCO world heritage opera house, it is only now during the Wagner Festspiele that it truly becomes a destination for international visitors (should not exceed ~145 characters)
Article status: Guide (must be guide or above).
Time to feature: during the Wagner Festspiele (year does not matter)
Nominated by: Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: While this place is pretty much OTBP year round, it becomes "world city for a while " (Weltstadt auf Zeit) during the Wagner festival. While I don't like Wagner one bit, Bayreuth is a nice town and the Wagner festival draws the who's who of Germany as well as well to do Wagner enthusiasts from around the world

Nomination
Right. Thats why this is not valid candidate anymore. --Saqib (talk) 17:46, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hs likely didn't know this rule (ps. the green tick in the upper right corner of the article's banner means that the article has been featured; for travel topics this is marked by an orange pen). As a side note, we have featured some articles twice but this has been in times of acute lack of candidates, I believe. --ϒpsilon (talk) 18:38, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we've ever had so few DotM candidates that we've been forced to rerun articles. The only time we've ever featured articles a second time was just after our relaunch as a WMF project, in January and February 2013. If I remember correctly, it was not due to a lack of candidates but to a desire on our part to take advantage of the burst of attention we'd be receiving from other WMF users by featuring the absolute best-of-the-best of our material. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:42, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Either way, at least Niamey, Bali and San Francisco have each been featured on the Main Page twice. I wasn't active on featured articles back then. ϒpsilon (talk) 18:57, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This nomination should be slushed, don't you think? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:59, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It should. ϒpsilon (talk) 21:01, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ikan, Ypsi: I chose not to immediately slush the nomination after I made my original comment in the hopes that Hobbitschuster would see the message and not have to wonder why his nomination suddenly disappeared. But I suppose it's just as well to Wikilink his name in this comment so it triggers the red Notification box at the top of his screen. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:07, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Place: On the trail of Marco Polo
Blurb: A historically important journey and a route some modern travellers approximately follow. (should not exceed ~145 characters)
Article status: Guide (must be guide or above).
Time to feature: Any, but much of the journey would be rough in N. Hemisphere winter
Nominated by: Pashley (talk) 06:58, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: One of several possible nominees suggested at Wikivoyage talk:Destination of the month candidates#Running out of potential FTTs?. The only problem I see is that the map has (what I think are) German rather than English spellings for some city names.

Nomination
  • Support. That article is really fun and well-researched, with great quotes! Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:27, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not sure — The article itself is interesting reading. While the winter might not be the best time to travel along this route, I guess one would need a couple of months of preparation for such a journey. So it could well be featured in the winter months. That brings me to the main problem: there's really no practical information on how to travel along this route in the present day. I'm not sure how much we would have to add to this article — the Silk Road article does give some ideas about what trips along this route would be like. ϒpsilon (talk) 12:57, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not yet — Agreed with Ypsi: this article works well as a recounting of Marco Polo's voyage, not so much for modern-day travellers who want to retrace his steps. An itinerary as formidable as this requires careful planning and preparation, and the article provides no information on the practical aspects of it. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:14, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK, now it's one month since the nomination... how shall we proceed? ϒpsilon (talk) 19:47, 18 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'd hesitate to take such measures after only a month, but if there's no progress by, say, the first of June then I'd say slush it. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:07, 18 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with YPSI. Guide lack practical information. And with due respect to Pashley who put great amount of time and efforts to write On the trail of Marco Polo and On the trail of Kipling's Kim but I can agree featuring guide in current state is not suitable due to reason stated above. --Saqib (talk) 21:25, 18 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Place: Yangshuo
Blurb: A small town in an extremely scenic area, major backpacker destination since the 80s, now much more developed and with many tour groups. (should not exceed ~145 characters)
Article status: Guide (must be guide or above).
Time to feature: Sep-Dec & Mar
Nominated by: Pashley (talk) 08:27, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I am not certain how up-to-date the article is; it looks good to me but I have not been there in about five years. Yangshuo is one of my favorite places in China and a major tourist draw. An alternative would be to nominate Guilin, a larger city nearby that is also a major tourist draw and has train station & airport (Y has neither). That article is tagged Usable, but it looks close to Guide.

Nomination
I also edited the Time to Feature. Per chinahighlights.com, Yangshuo has a rainy season from Apr-Aug, and Jan-Feb is out due to the Spring Festival (besides, it's too cold). -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:33, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not yet — Yangshou needs POI coordinates, maybe more pics, descriptions of some of the listings and Eat should probably be arranged into price categories. Plus, someone should check if content is still up to date. ϒpsilon (talk) 16:37, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I nominated this because it is rated Guide, the scenery is sensational, the town has lots of tourist facilities, and it is one of my favorite destinations. However, the criticisms above are valid. Checking the history I see I've been nearly the only editor in the last six months and I cannot bring it up to date because I have not been there in several years. While copy-editing, I also found other problems; see the talk page. Unless other contributors want to jump in, I think we'll have to slush it. Pashley (talk) 06:45, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
One can usually use the Internet to see whether the places are still in business — for instance I've patched and cleaned up many articles where I've never been. This of course requires that the places have home page or are listed somewhere else (and preferably in English). The other problem is with determining the addresses and locations; there doesn't seem to be any map service with street names in Latin script so it'd be good to have someone who can read Chinese to help with that... ϒpsilon (talk) 17:44, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone want to take care of this, or should it be slushed? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:46, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Place: Amritsar
Blurb: With its huge, magnificent Golden Temple, Punjab's second city is the spiritual and cultural center of the Sikh religion. (should not exceed ~145 characters)
Article status: Guide (must be guide or above).
Time to feature: Anytime except monsoon season (Jul-Sep)
Nominated by: AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:44, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Let's stock up on warm-weather DotMs for (northern) winter 2015-16.

Nomination
  • Close. There's only a few minor and easily fixable issues that preclude my support: the article needs a dynamic map and about half of the (numerous) listings lack coordinates; also, the article needs a customized lede, a better-developed "Understand" section, and a few minor copyedits. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:44, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not yet, but this is one of our better Indian Guide articles. In addition to what you just said, Buy and Drink would benefit of expansion. And Eat is not pricified here either. ϒpsilon (talk) 16:51, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not yet. Lead one-liner. Understand section needs to be expaded because history of the city matters, especially Operation Blue Star. Get around seems incomplete for such a city with soo many "see" listings. While so many hotels, but only few "Eat" and "Drink" listings are provided. --Saqib (talk) 17:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To be perfectly honest, it's frustrating that we've been searching for an October 2015 DotM candidate for many months, and not a single one that's been put forth (Edmonton, Fortaleza, Yangshuo, Cartagena and this one) has earned any Support votes. Either we need to lower our standards a little bit or we need to get off our duffs and actually make the edits these articles require - it's not enough to just vote "not yet" and then forget all about it. Let's get to it because October is going to be here sooner than you think. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:54, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Andrew: Sure, we need many more guide articles that we can use as featured guides, but I'm astonished to read your comment that you want us to compromise on the quality which is such a bad idea. Instead of lowering our standards, why not we put some efforts and look for ways so we can bring more people to edit Wikivoyage. But thats an another debate. And while certainly I agree with you that we shouldn't merely make complains and reject things and instead engage in improving the thigs, but I guess we are doing it already. Now as I said I'm not satisfied with EAT section so I think that section can only be fixed who have local knowledge. How I can I expect you to add EAT listings to Karachi when you never been to Pakistan. --Saqib (talk) 18:08, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's not what I'm saying at all, Saqib. What I'm saying is two things. One, if you read the beginning of this page you will see that the only requirement for an article to be featured is that it be at Guide status and that it have at least one picture. Anything else – such as a well-developed History section, a balance between the number of "Eat", "Sleep", and "Drink" listings, etc. – are not requirements. They're merely add-on bonuses that make an article even better than it has to be. That brings me to my second point, which is that if somebody would like an article to go above and beyond what's required for it to be featured, that's fine. That's better than fine, in fact. But the onus is on those users to add that content themselves and to not stand in the way of us finding something to fill those empty slots with. In fact, technically speaking, none of the oppose votes ("not yet" votes, etc.) for this article or for any of the other articles that have been rejected lately are valid because the reasons for those votes are not based in policy. Remember these are DotM nominees, not starnoms. They don't have to be perfect. They just have to be Guide or better.
Now you're asking me how I am supposed to add Eat listings for a city I've never been to. It's very simple, in fact. All I would have to do is go to Google, search for "restaurants in (insert city here)", and I would pull in all the information I needed for any number of different places: address, phone number, website address, menu, price range, what type of food is served, even reviews from other people who've been there. There's no policy against that, and if there were I bet we'd have a lot less content in all our articles, including previous DotMs.
-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:37, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Applogies for any misunderstanding. You know well my English is superb. Anyways. Frankly speaking, the line "The nominated article should have an article status of guide or star. This includes having at least one good picture" is funny. I don't think we ever featured a guide with just one photo so that line is definately need to change. Because on contrary, the guide template says "The article has a variety of good, quality information including hotels, restaurants, attractions and travel details." So yes, they're talking about good and quality information which means understand section should be adequate at at the least if not perfect. Amritsar missing that good quality information, in my opinion. I don't mind people who simply put "Guide" templates into articles but here, we have to evaluate them and pass them if they really are guide or not yet. They are going to feature on our main page for entire one month. Why feature something that missing adequate information. Why anyone would go to Amritsar? Because Amritsar is important center for the Sikh religion and anyone planning to go there will surely need to read about that. As for EAT listings, you're right. We can get information online about anything but if a city have hundreds of best restaurants, I think its become bit tough to get idea of which restaurants we suggest in our guides. With that being said, my vote is not "Oppose" vote, so it will not matter much if this entry manage to get some support votes. --Saqib (talk) 18:59, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the amount of work needed to get Amritsar into a "nice" shape is not gargantuan and it could likely be done even by one person over a weekend. See what Mombasa looked like less than a year ago ;). IMO it's enough for a featured article to be at (1)guide status, (2) clean and ordered and (3) have a decent selection of points of interest. In short: something I would like to take with me if I'd be visiting the place. Fixing the issues I and Andre mentioned above would make it such an article.
I too, think Google is a good tool for adding content to articles; though "original research" or content from other language versions of WV is always preferable! Actually Google has helped me save several articles from being slushed during the year I've been active on featured articles.ϒpsilon (talk) 19:40, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This may be a Guide, but it needs a lot of work before it could be reasonably nominated for DotM, as it should be when ready. First, it needs a thorough copy edit, especially in hotel listings, Many Of Which Are Full Of Gratuitous Initial Caps and other signs of touting. The "Sleep" section is arguably too long to be user-friendly, too, so perhaps hotels with touty descriptions or none should be unceremoniously deleted. "Buy" could use a little work, too, again for readability. (Should each type of item to buy be bolded, for example? And where should the shopping centre listing be put? Its current placement is without explanation.) Under "Do," what is "Amritsar Heritage Walk"? There is no explanation. If this is an itinerary, its route should be explained. If it's a paid tour, it should be deleted. "Old City Shopping" seems like a "Buy," not a "Do." What activities do people do in Amritsar, other than walking, studying (covered under "Learn") and praying?
I'll add kudos to User:Saqib for adding some needed content to the article, but though rated a Guide, it is a problematic Guide and currently unsuitable for a front-page feature. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:51, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To User:AndreCarrotflower's comments above, I believe that my objections are entirely reasonable, inasmuch as we want to feature quality Guides, not weak Guides, as User:Saqib mentioned. I've gotten off my duff big-time to almost single-handedly create the Wikivoyage:India Expedition article and the sub-articles for almost every state and one Union Territory, which focus on remarks about guides for the cities featured in the "Cities" section of each of those states (and Union Territory). In the meantime, I've done quite a lot of copy editing. But my work here is recreational, and frankly, it might be in my self-interest to do less and not more of it and focus more on things that might enable me to earn a bit of money. In any case, if anyone wants to do more work to improve the articles for India, regions of India, states and territories of India, regions of those states, or cities linked from the city and territorial guides, I've given plenty of guidance. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:01, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ikan - I'm sorry if my comments cut a little too deep, but I stand by them. I put in a lot of work on this site too. As everyone knows, I've been working on Buffalo for >3 years now. I just finished what basically amounts to a complete rewrite of Ad's Path so that it's in a featureable state, and recently made similar improvements to Davenport when called on to do so. My revamp of the Gaspé Peninsula is dormant for the time being but still in progress. I sweep the pub every single day without fail. And, most germane to this conversation, I handle DotM pretty much singlehandedly - not because I feel like I have some sort of ownership over it or because I want all for myself the power to determine what gets featured, but because no one else ever does. Because, before I got into the habit of updating the Main Page three times a month, oftentimes no one bothered to switch out the banners until a day, or even several days, after it was supposed to be done.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about it. Like Ikan and everyone else here, I could use the time I spend on Wikivoyage for something more lucrative, but instead I choose to stay here and continue my work because I enjoy it. And I don't see that changing anytime soon. All I'm asking is, please, if I'm trying like hell to find an article to fill the October 2015 slot with and folks don't like what I'm coming up with, then instead of being an obstructionist let's find a way forward together. Help out in sprucing up the article, come up with a different nominee, make some other suggestions, whatever - but it's not in any way constructive to just shoot all the nominees down and walk away.
-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 10:06, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I applaud your hard work (though in your case, fortunately, it did help you get a good job), and I understand your frustration, but I certainly stand by my remarks on Amritsar. I'll try to find another good candidate for DotM, though I probably can't actually post the nomination at least until I have my own functional computer (I'm typing on my girlfriend's notebook computer at the moment). Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:29, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
But if a nomination is not viewed as being up to standard, it is actually still quite constructive to "shoot it down" if the user is taking fair shots. I understand your frustrations and I have certainly not been as involved in things recently, but most nominations will be given comment with no attempt to improve the article. An article can be reviewed to a fair extent without knowing the location, but trying to make an article featurable when you don't know the city/country well is very difficult and not even necessarily a good idea. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 13:43, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

[unindent] A Northern Indian destination that seems to me to be closer to being ready for a feature is Jaipur. Have a look at Talk:Jaipur#What should be done before this article is featured on the front page for some discussion of what to do now. Mainly, it needs a more alluring lede, some listings need to have location info added and/or be templated, and everything should be checked as usual for possible updating. I will state as a caveat that I've been to Amritsar once and have yet to visit Jaipur, but my brief visit to Amritsar was in 1977 and concentrated on the Golden Temple, so it only barely counts, anyway. I'm not ready to nominate Jaipur yet, but I think the work it needs seems less drastic, and I'd love to see a Rajasthani city featured. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:39, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Would anyone like to come out of the woodwork and argue against slushing this nominee? If not, that's probably what I'll do in the next few days. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:34, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If Jaipur is in a better shape, let's nominate and feature it instead!
If most of the information is already in the article (or a WV article in another languge) but it's perhaps just presented in a clumsy way, I wouldn't agree that you'd have to had visited the destination in order to make it featurable. ϒpsilon (talk) 17:59, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Jaipur is close but still needs a bit more work. All the listings need to be checked for accuracy, with prices updated as appropriate. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:13, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Place: Edmonton
Blurb: The sprawling capital of Alberta is the "Gateway to the North", an oil boomtown that boasts North America's largest shopping mall and a festival season jam-packed with events to suit all tastes. (needs a touch-up?) (should not exceed ~145 characters)
Article status: Guide (must be guide or above).
Time to feature: Apr-Oct
Nominated by: AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:57, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Here's a nice, detailed article that looks ready to go. From bits and pieces of arcana I've noticed in old talk page discussions, I've gathered that the Edmonton article's main author was a colorful character (to put it generously) who rubbed a lot of regulars the wrong way and ended up getting userbanned. This was all way before my time on Wikivoyage, so I can't comment on the user himself, but one thing that struck me about Edmonton's previous slushed nomination is that it was rejected in an incredibly nitpicky fashion based on issues that were easy fixes - which I can only conjecture was due to personality conflicts. The major issue was with one of the district articles that was at less than Usable status, a problem solved by me in literally two minutes by adding the boilerplate lede sentence and changing the name of the "Luxury" subheading of the "Eat" section to the standard "Splurge". For good measure, I also updated some external links in the parent article to conform to the current format. It was also mentioned that some copyediting needed to be done, but I didn't see any such problems.

Nomination
  • Support. The only issue I foresee is timing, given that we've recently had a DotM from Alberta (Calgary, September 2014) and there's another one (Banff) on the schedule, slated for no earlier than next winter to avoid coming too close on Calgary's heels. Still, Edmonton has been waiting for a long time to be featured (having been slushed in 2009 for reasons I'd be hard-pressed to call valid, as described above), while Banff has some major deficiencies that can only really be solved by someone familiar with the area, and a principal author that hasn't touched the article since April of last year. If the community feels it's better to run Edmonton first, we could feature it as early as October 2015. Let's hear what you folks think. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:57, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nearly. Heh, I remember Edmontonenthusiast. While he was a bit of a handful, I have no trouble believing he could make a great travel guide for his hometown. Anyway, the Edmonton pages look pretty solid, although I'm bothered by the "Coffee" section on the main page being nothing more than a list of coffee shops; that should be sorted out and replaced with a more general overview of the coffee situation in Edmonton. Frankly, the same might be true of the Sleep section. The other main thing I would recommend is getting some dynamic maps into the district pages, because those old static maps of mine are really showing their age. PerryPlanet (talk) 04:12, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Needs work the listings in the districts need some serious checking and updating, ownership of hotels and restaurants changed since they were added. Also Edmonton Mall entry in West End deserves to be expanded considerably seeing as it is one of the main reasons people travel to the town. Also I would prefer to see the more tourist destinations of Jasper National Park or Banff as a feature article in the near future and concerned, as we have already had Calgary, that there would be objections to another Alberta article too soon. --Traveler100 (talk) 04:48, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding questionable listings and outdated static maps in the district articles, let's please keep in mind that it's the parent article that's been nominated, not the districts. If folks would like to update the district articles, that would certainly be helpful, but when featuring a Huge City the only thing that's required of the district articles is that they be Usable status or better. Also, to address Traveler100's comment: Destination of the Month is a showcase for well-written articles, not a popularity contest for the most famous tourist destinations (also, Jasper National Park is only at Usable status). As to timing, I would be firmly against featuring Calgary, Banff, and Edmonton all within a ~15 month period, but I think it would be fine to feature two of those destinations during that period if the third one is slushed or put off until later. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:41, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Regardless, the district pages are a crucial component of a good city guide, and I believe they should be taken into account in these nominations. Yes, the only thing we require of district pages for Huge City DotM features is that they be usable, but I see that as a base requirement rather than what we would ideally look for in a featured city guide. PerryPlanet (talk) 01:19, 4 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Almost — The article looks OK. I'm, too, a little worried about the coffee section, and shouldn't the skyline views be in the Edmonton article if they are spread around different parts of the city. Someone checking through the listings in the districts plus adding dynamic maps with POIs would certainly not hurt. I agree we should avoid having three destinations from Alberta within a little more than a year (especially as all are nominated as DotM). Now as Calgary and Edmonton both are cities plain and simple but Banff is more of a resort (isn't it?), I would pick Banff because of its different character — this is probably what Traveler100 tried to say above. ϒpsilon (talk) 16:33, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with ϒpsilon on the "Coffee" section. I also feel like too many bars are named in the "Alcohol" section, too many restaurants are named in the "Eat" section and too many hotels are named in the "Sleep" section. How many featured districted cities had so many hotels named in their "Sleep" sections? Any? Other than that, though, I don't notice any obvious problems with what's otherwise seemingly (as I've never been to Edmnonton) a very good article, so if someone wrote a good overview with fewer individual establishments mentioned in all of those sections, I think I would support running the article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:17, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I still do not understand how a page can be nominated just because it has a lot of old content that has not been check if still valid. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:34, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If there is a lot of information that hasn't been checked since 2009, that's bad and does have to be remedied before the article should be run. 6-year-old restaurant and bar information is unlikely to still be valid, and for that matter, lots of admission fees are likely to have increased. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Let's slush it. It can always be nominated again when someone actually has updated the article and solved those other issues — and at least I have enough work with both other articles and off wiki. ϒpsilon (talk) 10:44, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Place: Wales Coast Path
Blurb: 1400 km walk around the whole coastline of Wales (should not exceed ~145 characters)
Article status: Guide (must be guide or above).
Time to feature: Summer
Nominated by: --Traveler100 (talk) 15:54, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Reasonable introduction and understand text, comprehensive list of attractions.

Nomination
  • Comment — The descriptions of each section in Walk could perhaps be longer and more descriptive instead of just "Around the Isle of Anglesey." Overall, expanding the descriptions of each of the destinations on the path wouldn't hurt. ϒpsilon (talk) 17:09, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not yet by a long shot. The article needs a lot of work before I'd even be prepared to say that it's truly at Guide status. Pretty much every section needs to be expanded, especially the bullet points of the main itinerary section, and the entries in "Go next", many of which lack the standard one-liner descriptions. As well, there are several subsections of "Understand" that are empty or contain only a sentence or two. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:10, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not yet - The walk section is somewhat lacking in detail. If this is really to be a good guide it needs to be a "huge itinerary", broken down into maybe a dozen pages, as I think that about 100km of walk is probably enough for one page. The walk section is not much more than a list of places, with nothing about the track etc. The track is also broken on the dynamic map, as open street map doesn't appear to show the whole route. AlasdairW (talk) 23:05, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Two months on, it looks as if very little progress has been made in addressing the concerns expressed above by Ypsi, AlasdairW and myself. Is it time to slush? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:08, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid it is. An article walk of 1400km needs more information about the environment and the destinations you pass through. Something like this (though that one article suffers from a lack of coordinates and a good map!) ϒpsilon (talk) 21:20, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]