Wikivoyage:Destination of the month candidates/Slush pile/2016
← 2015 | DotM slush pile for 2016 | (current) 2017 → |
Place: American Industry Tour |
Nomination
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- This article is very well-written - it's definitely Usable (and I've upgraded it as such), with the only barriers to Guide status being the lack of one-liner descriptions on the entries in the "See also" section, and a few bare listings in the itinerary itself. However, I cannot support this article until the problem with the article name (described on the talk page) is resolved.
- The problem as I see it is twofold:
- First of all, "Manufacturing Belt" is not a recognized term in the United States. That is to say, if a tourist with no knowledge of the U.S. were to arrive and ask the natives about the "Manufacturing Belt", they would probably be able to suss out what the tourist was referring to, but no one in the U.S. uses that term themselves. The region at issue is understood to be called the Rust Belt.
- Secondly, the article's title should reflect the fact that it's an itinerary. Even if we were to rename the article to "Rust Belt", the title would still sound more like an extrahierarchical region. In fact, at Wikivoyage:Requested articles I myself proposed the creation of such an extraregion article (Rust Belt currently exists as a redirect to Manufacturing Belt). It's arguable that the term "Rust Belt" may have a slightly negative connotation in the U.S., so on the talk page earlier I suggested the title Industrial American Tour (currently another redirect to Manufacturing Belt).
- I will be happy to support this article when it's renamed with a title that reflects common usage and clarifies the article's status as an itinerary rather than a destination. Additionally, down the line, what I'd ideally like to see happen is the creation of a Rust Belt extraregion article, with Manufacturing Belt redirected there.
- Articles need to have Guide status to be featured on the Main Page. Nevertheless it looks like the article is in a good shape and it could probably be promoted to Guide with comparatively little work :). ϒpsilon (talk) 11:58, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
- Name changed. /Yvwv (talk) 14:38, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
- But that only solves one half of the problem. When I click on an article called Rust Belt, I expect it to be a destination article - just the same as I'd be surprised if I clicked on Wales or Sumatra or Upper Peninsula only to discover that they were itineraries. There's got to be something in the title to reflect what kind of article it is. Rust Belt Tour or Industrial America Tour, or something like that, is a much more acceptable title. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:41, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
- Rust Belt Tour it is, then. /Yvwv (talk) 17:33, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. Since that was the only issue standing in the way of my support, I suppose I'll cast my vote then. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:41, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
- Rust Belt Tour it is, then. /Yvwv (talk) 17:33, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
- But that only solves one half of the problem. When I click on an article called Rust Belt, I expect it to be a destination article - just the same as I'd be surprised if I clicked on Wales or Sumatra or Upper Peninsula only to discover that they were itineraries. There's got to be something in the title to reflect what kind of article it is. Rust Belt Tour or Industrial America Tour, or something like that, is a much more acceptable title. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:41, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
- Name changed. /Yvwv (talk) 14:38, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
- Not yet. I like the idea of this guide, but I think it has a ways to go before it can properly be considered at "Guide" status. A lot of the listings have no descriptions, and even many that do give you no real sense of why you should visit this place. I see the framework for a good itinerary here, but I think it needs to be fleshed out much more. PerryPlanet (talk) 22:09, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
- I'm afraid I'm having trouble with the inclusion of areas such as Boston, NYC, and Jersey in the "Rust Belt". While they did have strong manufacturing bases that are now weakened or gone, the term "Rust Belt" further implies the lack of replacement of those industries with new ones -- that is, all the old buildings are rusting and disused. From that perspective, it seems bizarre to include healthy post-industrial cities while excluding Erie, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Binghamton. Powers (talk) 22:45, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
- The two comments above this one are convincing. I'm quite sure that we have plenty of hands on deck (self included) who can help bring the article up to speed by next summer, though, and I'd love to see this article featured, so I will be monitoring the progress on this nominee with interest. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:32, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
- Yet another name change; the article is now named American Industry Tour. Concerning industrial towns in western New York State, they get mentioned in the Erie Canal articles. We could however consider an alternative route westward from Albany, through Ontario, connecting to Detroit. /Yvwv (talk) 15:27, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
- I see where you're coming from with your concerns about Erie Canal, Yvwv, especially since the canal was what spurred the first phase of industrialization in Upstate New York. But if you look at that article, Powers only occasionally hits on the topic of industrial history (mainly in the "Understand" section) while focusing mostly on the canal's present-day role as an amenity for pleasure boaters - the itinerary itself is given over mostly to general tourist information for the towns the canal passes through, as well as practical information for boaters (lift bridges, locks, public docks, etc). While there are undoubtedly many ways the two articles could interface with each other, I don't think it would be in any way redundant for them to coexist in the same geographical space, with different focuses and therefore different information. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:48, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
- Also: IMO it would be a bad idea to route the itinerary between Buffalo and Detroit via Ontario. With the exception of a few outliers such as Windsor and maybe the Welland Canal corridor, the economy of that part of Canada historically had much more to do with agriculture than heavy industry. I'm actually in favor of retaining the portion of the itinerary in Western Massachusetts - while not part of the Rust Belt proper, manufacturing did play an important role in that region's economy, with the same pattern of decline post-WWII - and from there I'd have the route cross Upstate New York via I-90 (i.e. the Erie Canal corridor), bypassing New Jersey and the New York City vicinity entirely, and continuing through Ohio and Michigan as it does currently. Pennsylvania obviously needs to be worked in somewhere too, but how to do so in a practical way is a tougher question than I can answer by cell phone on my break at work.) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:42, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
- I am struggling to understand that this is a one week trip - three weeks sounds more likely. Day 5 has 13 stopping points listed! There is no text linking the places, to give an idea of times between places ("15 minutes west on I123 you will come to..."). It is also missing any suggestions of places to sleep (not hotel listings, but suggest which cities - last one of current day, first of one of next day etc) - or is it good to do the trip in a camper van. AlasdairW (talk) 05:03, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
- AlasdairW has a good point. This reads like a travel topic. Even though it says "Day 1, 2, 3, etc", looking at it, each "day" is actually just a different state. I also agree that it's fine to have the same sites listed in multiple itineraries/travel topics, as long as the topics themselves are different. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:35, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
- Agreed with ChubbyWimbus that this would work better as a travel topic, especially since there's no obvious route to follow (see my comments above timestamped 19:42, 22 December). -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:48, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
- So, what to do with this one? I was almost ready to support it, but voyagers more knowledgable about the northeastern US have pointed out that the article still has a lot of issues. Plus, it's likely it won't get on the Main Page before the summer of 2017 anyway. Finally, it's still at Usable status which in itself means that the article is not eligible for nomination in the first place. ϒpsilon (talk) 09:37, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- Slush it. It's not a Guide and we aren't desperate for features yet. Powers (talk) 16:17, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- I say leave it up for now, with the understanding that the changes that need to be made before a consensus in its favor is likely are major: adding the Erie Canal corridor to its purview and removing non-Rust Belt Eastern Seaboard areas such as Boston, NYC, and New Jersey; expanding the descriptions in the listings and linking them to each other thematically; perhaps converting the whole shebang from an itinerary to a travel topic. It's a tall order, but we have north of a year in which to accomplish it all (and I don't see it as a problem in and of itself to have it waiting on this page for that long). We can revisit the question of whether to slush this feature if no significant progress has been made in, let's say, three months. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:45, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- Hmm... on the other hand, there have been a lot of U.S. cities that are ripe for being featured but we've put off nominating because of how long they'd have to wait: in the past year there has been talk about Baltimore, Albany, Seattle, Nashville, and perhaps more that I'm not recalling, and of course Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side has already been nominated. Slushing American Industry Tour would make room on the summer 2017 schedule for another U.S. destination. I still say let's hold off on slushing it, but let's keep that in mind when it comes time to make a decision on it in a few months. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:50, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- As it's not a Guide article, it shouldn't even be here in the first place. If it was close to being a Guide, just needing a few tweaks, that'd be one thing, but it was Usable when it was nominated, it's still Usable now, and there's no quick fix to get it to Guide. What outcome is better served by leaving it here than by putting it on the slush pile? Powers (talk) 21:35, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- Powers - I don't think all the issues outlined in this discussion necessarily have to be fixed before it's at Guide status. To be honest, I don't hold out much more hope than you do for this nominee, but I think the collegial thing to do would be to at least give Yvwv the chance to prove us wrong. If you're correct about the amount that can be realistically accomplished within the three-month window that I suggested, then the result will be precisely the same as what you're arguing for: the nominee will be slushed. On the other hand, is Yvwv is inspired to make the required fixes, then it will be a boon not only to DotM but to the site as a whole. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:38, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- As it's not a Guide article, it shouldn't even be here in the first place. If it was close to being a Guide, just needing a few tweaks, that'd be one thing, but it was Usable when it was nominated, it's still Usable now, and there's no quick fix to get it to Guide. What outcome is better served by leaving it here than by putting it on the slush pile? Powers (talk) 21:35, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- Hmm... on the other hand, there have been a lot of U.S. cities that are ripe for being featured but we've put off nominating because of how long they'd have to wait: in the past year there has been talk about Baltimore, Albany, Seattle, Nashville, and perhaps more that I'm not recalling, and of course Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side has already been nominated. Slushing American Industry Tour would make room on the summer 2017 schedule for another U.S. destination. I still say let's hold off on slushing it, but let's keep that in mind when it comes time to make a decision on it in a few months. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:50, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- I say leave it up for now, with the understanding that the changes that need to be made before a consensus in its favor is likely are major: adding the Erie Canal corridor to its purview and removing non-Rust Belt Eastern Seaboard areas such as Boston, NYC, and New Jersey; expanding the descriptions in the listings and linking them to each other thematically; perhaps converting the whole shebang from an itinerary to a travel topic. It's a tall order, but we have north of a year in which to accomplish it all (and I don't see it as a problem in and of itself to have it waiting on this page for that long). We can revisit the question of whether to slush this feature if no significant progress has been made in, let's say, three months. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:45, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- Slush it. It's not a Guide and we aren't desperate for features yet. Powers (talk) 16:17, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- I admit that the article itself was experimental, and the nomination was a long shot. Appreciate the comments, though. /Yvwv (talk) 21:50, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
Place: Hong Kong/Kowloon |
Nomination
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- Almost. Most but not all of the listings have coordinates; the remainder need to be filled in. Also, "Connect" and "Go next" need to be expanded. Beyond those easy fixes, though, there's quite a weath of information here. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:36, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
- Hmm I (and some others) actually had my eyes on next-door Macau for some month next winter... For this article, I agree with you — it's a quite good article but many listings, especially in Sleep, lack coordinates. ϒpsilon (talk) 18:01, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
- ϒpsilon - after briefly looking over Macau, I will happily slush this article if you'd like to nominate that one. It looks like less work needs to be done with Macau, and obviously, from a geographic diversity perspective, we can't feature both of these destinations in the same year. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:05, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
- I'll nominate it. Actually it was Pashley's idea first. :) ϒpsilon (talk) 18:20, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
Place: Indianapolis |
Nomination
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- Weak support as nominator. Here's what needs to be done for my unqualified support:
- There's a dynamic map, but no listings outside the "See" section have coordinates.
- Some listings in "Do" need to be moved or reformatted: for example, "Get creeped out at the Indiana Medical History Museum" should be simply "Indiana Medical History Museum", and belongs in "See". (In other words, there's a time and a place to use lively tone.)
- "Go next" should list cities or other destinations, not individual attractions.
- -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
- Support and comment I would be happy to do any tiding up that anyone thinks is necessary and an eight-month time frame is definitely doable. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:19, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
- Almost support — mostly due to the lack of coordinates. Also, I'm a little curious about the plan to divide the Indianapolis article into districts. I don't think it has to be done but I don't oppose the idea either (the article is long but not unwieldy). Nevertheless if Justin or others would like to do this, the distrification should also be completed by the time the article goes live. ϒpsilon (talk) 19:32, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
- Almost — I like the article, but there is some scope for improvement, as featured articles are more likely to be read by people who haven't been to the US.
- The term "Indy" is widely used but not explained - does everybody in the US understand Indy to mean Indianapolis, not Indiana? A couple more photos of See listings would be good. There are some Do listings (Other fun) that should be in Eat. "Wander the galleries on First Fridays" - it is not clear whether these galleries are open on any other day of the month.
- Get in could be improved: 3 of the airports have broken links, and we should probably be clearer which have regular commercial flights; Indianapolis International Airport should be expanded to list the main cities served and also to give ground transport details - 8 bus, price of a taxi to town etc. By bus could be expanded e.g. Greyhound have 7 buses per day from Chicago taking around 4 hours.
- All the listings need to be checked as I have found a few broken links: Fountain Diner, MCL Cafeteria, The Bosphorus Istanbul Cafe, Red Eye Cafe, Serendipity Haus. AlasdairW (talk) 22:10, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
- Almost, mainly for the ongoing lack of coordinates in most listings, as mentioned above. Also, there are many external links that are still in the old number format (e.g., [26]) that need to get re-formatted. PerryPlanet (talk) 20:12, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
- Other than See, the article's listings completely lack coordinates and the article is scheduled to be up on the Main Page in two months. Justin? ϒpsilon (talk) 18:59, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
- This article currently has only 2 support votes, so our other alternative would be to postpone featuring it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:26, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
- The fixes that Indianapolis needs - coordinates, several listings migrated from "Do" to "See", "Go next" reformatted, etc. - consist of work that is somewhat tedious, but ultimately simple and doable by anyone with access to Google. Two months should be more than enough time to take care of them. I'm in the middle of the first major round of updates to the Buffalo district articles since its DotM feature, but I'll see if I can find time to pitch in. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:50, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
- I notified Justin as he in a comment above said he is happy to help out (and he's also a local and to my understanding a major contributor to the article). However I can help out if no one else has time. ϒpsilon (talk) 05:54, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
- I took a closer look at this article, and I have to admit I was wrong about the amount of work that needs to be done. The main problem with this article as I see it is there's just too many listings and too much information to sift through. What Indianapolis really needs is to be districtified, which of course is a task that would take far more than two months. Given the fact that there are plenty of other U.S. destinations ready and waiting to be featured, I'd be fine with throwing this nominee on the slush pile for now. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:56, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
- Nobody? Okay, I'm going to give this another day or two, then slush the article and replace it with another nominee. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:08, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
- If we decide to swap Indianapolis for some other US city, then Baltimore with many guide and even one Star district are or Seattle which Othello95 has worked extensively on are good alternatives. If the problem would only be the missing coordinates I and my friend Google maps could possibly fix it even if noone else would have time. Districtifying the city, including map drawing and whatnot would however be a much more challenging (and time consuming) project even if there'd be many voyagers working on it. ϒpsilon (talk) 22:30, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
- I agree with slushing this nomination. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:06, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
- Ypsilon: I'd be hesitant to feature Baltimore given that we'll be running Washington, D.C./Anacostia as OtBP just a few months later. From what I remember of Seattle, it needs some pretty extensive copyedits for grammar but is otherwise fine. I'll look it over again; worst-case scenario, we have a plethora of other potential U.S. DotMs to choose from (Nashville is another one). -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:52, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
- I agree with slushing this nomination. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:06, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
- If we decide to swap Indianapolis for some other US city, then Baltimore with many guide and even one Star district are or Seattle which Othello95 has worked extensively on are good alternatives. If the problem would only be the missing coordinates I and my friend Google maps could possibly fix it even if noone else would have time. Districtifying the city, including map drawing and whatnot would however be a much more challenging (and time consuming) project even if there'd be many voyagers working on it. ϒpsilon (talk) 22:30, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
- Nobody? Okay, I'm going to give this another day or two, then slush the article and replace it with another nominee. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:08, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
Place: Montreal/Downtown |
Nomination
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- I realise that the article should first be brought up to guide standard before nominating, but in this case I would like to get some initial feedback first. We had a late request to feature Esino Lario during Wikimania 2016 (see Wikivoyage:Travellers'_pub#Esino_Lario_on_home_page.3F), and it would be good to feature somewhere relevant to next years event. An alternative suggestion would be the neighbouring district of Old Montreal which has guide status. AlasdairW (talk) 21:56, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
- We've been featuring an awful lot of Huge City districts lately (Paris/1st arrondissement, Washington, D.C./Anacostia, Edinburgh/New Town, London/Hampstead). If we have a whole year of hangtime before Wikimania 2017, why not try to get Montreal itself up to Guide status? If you look at Wikivoyage:City guide status, it's not exactly a huge undertaking to create a Usable district article — and also, if you'll pardon the opportunism, a Montreal DotM push would also entail some attention to the issue of the districts breakdown, for which I proposed a solution that garnered little meaningful feedback. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:54, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- Agree with a lot of huge city districts having been featured recently, with regard to this it would be preferable to feature the whole of Montreal if we decide to do so in August 2017. Moreover, given that Gaspé is in Quebec too, it would be good if there'd be at least a month or two between these article's stints on the Main Page.
- As of now there are some very good district articles and many outlines only lack a hotel to be eligible for usable status. Also, per André's proposed district scheme (which I supported on Montreal's talk page a few months back, though it would be great to hear comments from people who've actually been to the city) many shorter outlines will be fusioned into bigger usable entities so I guess the districts aren't that much of a problem. The main Montreal article does still need some work, though, there are listings that need to be moved to the (new) districts, also, there are a lot of bulleted points in the article that could perhaps be reformatted into prose. ϒpsilon (talk) 07:32, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- Yikes. I completely forgot about Gaspé Peninsula. I hate to say it, but I think we're going to have to pick one or the other. The "Time to feature" for any Québécois destination would be very short - Jun-Sep, probably, and even the first and last months of that range are fairly iffy. I personally would have a hard time justifying two destinations from the same country, never mind the same province, within that short space of time. Of the two: maybe I'm biased, but I prefer the Gaspé to be the one that's featured next year, and Montreal to wait till 2018. First of all, the Gaspé was nominated first; second of all, we featured City of London for Wikimania 2014 and, frankly, Wikimania isn't an important enough event for people outside the wiki community to run a "timely feature" DotM for it so frequently. Remember the intended audience of our site is the general travelling public, not just WMF insiders. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 08:03, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- While you are right about the comment concerning our target audience, there is a good reason to feature Wikimania sites. First of all the thing that happened last time with Esino Lario and second we need more editors. Wikimania participants are more likely to become (frequent) editors than any random member of our audience who reads our featured article. And once we attract a critical number of editors and raise our search engine ranking enough, we can feature pretty much anything. Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:29, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- I would be happy if Montreal was featured instead, but I do think that the August 2017 date is important. Our target audience will not be aware that Wikimania is happening (it needn't be mentioned in the blurb or in the article), but it may help to raise awareness of Wikivoyage amongst those attending (who are potential editors from around the world). My experience at Wikimedia Meetups is that many WP and Commons contributors are unaware of our site. We did receive a request to feature Esino Lario, but this was made only a few days before Wikimania 2016 started, and so was far too late. AlasdairW (talk) 21:08, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- Noble though the goal of expanding our editing community or raising search engine visibility may be, I think we do the site a disservice when we prioritize anything higher than benefit to the traveller in our decision-making process - but, even if hypothetically we were to factor that consideration in, I think you're wildly overestimating the degree to which a Montreal DotM feature that coincides with Wikimania would benefit us. First of all, think about the kind of people who attend Wikimania. They are the most avid wiki aficionados on the planet, up to date with almost everything that's going on in the world of the WMF, way more so than a rank-and-file attendee at your average meetup. I find it extremely hard to believe that such people would be unaware of Wikivoyage. If they had any interest in becoming regular editors of our site, they would already be here (and a lot of them are; ever since we were accepted into the WMF fold we've had a slow but steady influx of editors from other projects). As a case in point, let's look at Wikimania 2014, which coincided with City of London as July's DotM. Was there a noticeable increase in new editors in the aftermath of that? No, not at all - and 2014 had the highest attendance in the history of Wikimania, to boot.
- I would be happy if Montreal was featured instead, but I do think that the August 2017 date is important. Our target audience will not be aware that Wikimania is happening (it needn't be mentioned in the blurb or in the article), but it may help to raise awareness of Wikivoyage amongst those attending (who are potential editors from around the world). My experience at Wikimedia Meetups is that many WP and Commons contributors are unaware of our site. We did receive a request to feature Esino Lario, but this was made only a few days before Wikimania 2016 started, and so was far too late. AlasdairW (talk) 21:08, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- While you are right about the comment concerning our target audience, there is a good reason to feature Wikimania sites. First of all the thing that happened last time with Esino Lario and second we need more editors. Wikimania participants are more likely to become (frequent) editors than any random member of our audience who reads our featured article. And once we attract a critical number of editors and raise our search engine ranking enough, we can feature pretty much anything. Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:29, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- Yikes. I completely forgot about Gaspé Peninsula. I hate to say it, but I think we're going to have to pick one or the other. The "Time to feature" for any Québécois destination would be very short - Jun-Sep, probably, and even the first and last months of that range are fairly iffy. I personally would have a hard time justifying two destinations from the same country, never mind the same province, within that short space of time. Of the two: maybe I'm biased, but I prefer the Gaspé to be the one that's featured next year, and Montreal to wait till 2018. First of all, the Gaspé was nominated first; second of all, we featured City of London for Wikimania 2014 and, frankly, Wikimania isn't an important enough event for people outside the wiki community to run a "timely feature" DotM for it so frequently. Remember the intended audience of our site is the general travelling public, not just WMF insiders. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 08:03, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- We've been featuring an awful lot of Huge City districts lately (Paris/1st arrondissement, Washington, D.C./Anacostia, Edinburgh/New Town, London/Hampstead). If we have a whole year of hangtime before Wikimania 2017, why not try to get Montreal itself up to Guide status? If you look at Wikivoyage:City guide status, it's not exactly a huge undertaking to create a Usable district article — and also, if you'll pardon the opportunism, a Montreal DotM push would also entail some attention to the issue of the districts breakdown, for which I proposed a solution that garnered little meaningful feedback. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:54, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- And what, by the way, was that lofty attendance figure? A little bit more than 1,700 people. Chump change in the grand scheme of things. Even if we're to accept the shaky premise that these people are balls-to-the-wall wiki fanatics yet have somehow never heard of Wikivoyage, the sheer extent to which Wikimania's attendance figures are dwarfed by those of other "timely events" we've coincided DotMs with - Munich Oktoberfest; Eurovision 2015 in Vienna - more than eliminates any advantage in catering to a niche audience that may (or, again, may not) be more interested than average folks in getting involved in our site.
- Another thing I remember about City of London is that in order to have it on the Main Page simultaneously to Wikimania, we had to strongarm London/Hampstead off the schedule, a perfectly worthy OtBP candidate just like Gaspé Peninsula is, that had already been waiting almost a year at that point to be featured. We ended up having to throw Hampstead on the Slush Pile, and it was only featured this year, two full years after we'd originally intended to feature it and almost three years after it had first been nominated. This leads into my next point: I'd like to take up the issue of policy as it relates to how, in the present day, we decide which articles to run as DotMs and when. Our policy as it is today, which emphasizes that the schedule is "not cast in stone... and... can be changed if, for example, an excellent guide for a timely event is found", was designed to handle a dearth, not an abundance, of DotM candidates. When I first started contributing to Wikivoyage, the schedule grid was never planned out more than three months in advance - four at most, but that was the exception rather than the rule - and a majority of the slots at any given time were filled with ?s. In fact, I remember more than one instance when a DotM or an OtBP was almost due to expire from the Main Page and we still had no idea what we were going to replace it with. We had to find a candidate and solicit votes all in the space of a day or two, and God help us if anyone voted Oppose. Nowadays it’s a whole different world. I can't remember the last time there was a ? on the schedule grid. The schedule is planned out six months in advance per policy, but we always have enough nominees at any given time that there are two or three more months' worth of candidates just waiting in the wings. In fact, I have articles in mind up through 2019 that I haven't yet nominated on this page because it would be patently ridiculous to do so that far in advance. A situation like we have today at DotM calls for us to be a lot less willy-nilly when it comes to rearranging the schedule, lest we run up against the problem of articles languishing on the nominations page for too long. I realize this isn't the place to propose it, but all the same I would like to see our policy changed to reflect what we have been doing informally all along to manage the backload of candidates: we should (as much as Time to Feature allows) prioritize those candidates that have been waiting the longest, and when "timely event" features are nominated with little advance notice in ways that force preexisting nominees to be delayed, we should take a very long and critical look at whether the scale and importance of the event justifies the disruption. And I apologize for my bluntness, but on that scale Wikimania doesn't even rate. I admit that in the discussion over whether to feature Hampstead or City of London in 2014, I came down on the side of the latter, but that's only because we had never featured a Wikimania host city as DotM before. I think that to suggest we feature the Wikimania host city literally every subsequent year - first with Esino Lario and now with Montreal - is excessive to the point of absurdity. There is simply too much competition between too many candidates for too few slots on the schedule - especially ones in the Northern Hemisphere summer, the most competitive time of year - for us to repeatedly bend over backwards to accommodate an event that is so minor in scale and of such paltry significance to the average reader.
- -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:25, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
- First of all, I oppose featuring an article that's not at least a Guide, per policy, so I think this nomination is premature. Second, Gaspe is a very interesting destination and probably a much more important one than Hampstead, which is a single neighborhood in London, so I'm very sympathetic to the argument that it shouldn't be bumped after Andrew has worked on it and articles linked from it for years. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:12, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
- -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:25, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
- One way to "solve" the abundance of feature candidates is to feature more articles. Either by reducing the amount of time between features (e.g. on DotM every two weeks) or by introducing a new category, whatever that category may be. On the other hand as Wikimania seems to be a single weekend, maybe we can "feature" something for that weekend alone? Either as part of the normal rotation or in an optional "fourth spot" for "topical" destinations that are only relevant for a rather short window of time? Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:42, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
- As there is objection to the idea of scheduling this during Wikimania, I will withdraw the nomination. I am glad that we had this discussion before wasting time bringing the article up to guide. AlasdairW (talk) 22:34, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
- In what way is improving an article to Guide status ever a waste of time? You think that only a feature in a month of your choosing makes such work worth a damn? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:48, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
- Since Downtown Montreal isn't at Guide status yet and won't be featured on the Main Page until 2018 at the earliest, I agree that the slush pile is the way to go with this nomination. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 11:20, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Place: Sighișoara |
Nomination
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- Oppose. Romanichthys, please take another look at the procedure for nominating DotMs. For one thing, this article is only at Usable level and thus does not qualify for DotM; for another, you need to come up with something original for the "comment" argument rather than copying the example one about luvvy-jubbly speingtimes we have at the top of this page. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:32, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
- Speedy slush. As Andre says, we never feature Usable articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:47, 18 December 2016 (UTC)