Wikivoyage:Fellow traveller Expedition

The Fellow Traveller Expedition is a Wikivoyage Expedition to explore how Wikivoyage can cooperate with other relevant, open-content, user-generated projects to which we have some relation.

Rationale

Travellers, whether they're taking the same route or merely crossing paths, will often help each other out. Wikivoyage is itself taking a virtual journey towards our goals, and along the way we will meet other projects trying to get to their respective goals.

By working with other projects in constructive ways, Wikivoyage can build up good will in the Internet community, which could mean more Wikivoyagers and thus more and better Wikivoyage content. By leaning on other projects, we can offload side tasks that we'd otherwise have to take on ourselves. In addition we can learn from others' experience, which, hey, is what Wikivoyage is all about.

Goals

• To identify and list other projects related to Wikivoyage.
• To determine for each project what we can offer and what we can use.
• To approach projects and communicate with them.
• To execute cooperation plans.

What's a related project?

There are uncounted things that could be called "projects" in the world: Web sites, organizations, individual efforts, etc. To be related to Wikivoyage, projects should either have something to do with our goals, or with the way we are trying to achieve those goals. Projects may be related to Wikivoyage if they're involved in or have something to do with one of these topics:

• Travel, and particularly travel guides.
• Geography.
• Creating reference works.
• Wikis.
• Open Content.

There are probably other ways that projects can cross Wikivoyage's path; these are just some of the more obvious ones.

List of related projects

Projects that are related to Wikivoyage should be added to the list of related projects. Each related project should have an URL listed, as well as a brief explanation of the project, its licensing, and how it's related to Wikivoyage.

Cooperation

If there's interest in cooperating with a project, we can make a cooperation page in the Wikivoyage: namespace to talk about what we can offer and what we can use from the project. Cooperation pages should be named something like "Cooperating with Name of project", such as Project:Cooperating with Wikipedia, and should also be listed on the List of related projects page.

Approaching other projects

Of course, any Wikivoyager can approach any other project at any time to talk to them about cooperating with Wikivoyage in any way. That said, it would probably be helpful to look for, or start, a cooperation page to coordinate with other Wikivoyagers before approaching other projects.

It's probably not a good idea to represent yourself as something you're not ("As the elected president of Wikivoyage, ...") or to make promises you can't keep ("We'll change our software to meet your needs!" "We'll host your Web site!" "We'll give you a special license to Wikivoyage content!"). It will be embarassing to you when the truth comes out, and it might make future relationships somewhat strained.

When you approach the other project, be sure to give them the URL to Wikivoyage, and preferably the URLs to the Project:About page and the cooperation page for their project. Give them lots of options for responding -- although working on the cooperation page would probably be the best way to get them involved.