Wikivoyage talk:Cooperating with Wikipedia/Archive 2004-2016

Copying to Wikipedia

What are the rules for copying from Wikivoyage to Wikipedia if I am the sole author? Does it make any difference if the article has been deleted from Wikivoyage? (WT-en) Notty

It makes no difference whatsoever. If you are the sole author of an article, you hold full copyright on it, and you can re-license it under the GFDL (Wikipedia's license). However, if anyone has made changes to the article, you can't copy it over. You can, however, look through the page history and find the last version that only you had worked on, and use that. --(WT-en) Evan 11:14, 3 Feb 2004 (EST)

And now the licences are the same on both sites. Better answers in the current version of the page, I hope. --LPfi (talk) 08:46, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Are they the same? I'd thought that somewhere WP was still asking editors to dual-license content under both CC-BY-SA and GFDL, which we don't do. K7L (talk) 11:13, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

OK. If that is still the case, the lack of GFDL licence should be clearly mentioned (history and talk page template?), as explained somewhere. Copying to here is not a problem, as the CC-BY-SA should be the same. --LPfi (talk) 14:29, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

If you try to edit over there, this appears under the edit summary box: "Edit summary (Briefly describe your changes)"..."By saving changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." K7L (talk) 14:50, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikivoyage in Wikipedia

Moved from Project:travellers' pub by (WT-en) Evan

There is now an article on Wikivoyage in Wikipedia, in English and French. You said milestones? ;o) (WT-en) Yann 06:50, 22 Feb 2004 (EST)

Cool Logo. Is it going to be used here also? (WT-en) Caffeine 05:57, 27 Feb 2004 (EST)

It is already! If you change your skin from Cologne Blue (the default) to Standard, it appears on every page. --(WT-en) Evan 09:14, 27 Feb 2004 (EST)

Links from Wikipedia

[Moved from Travellers' pub by (WT-en) Hypatia 18:22, 16 Dec 2004 (EST)]

One simple way to increase Wikivoyage's ranking in the web world: if you write a good non-stub Wikivoyage article, then link it in from the corresponding Wikipedia page (I use [http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/article/X Wikivoyage: X] under "External links"). This is relevant content — travel guides cover the same topic, but serve different audiences — and I've never had a link removed yet, and when the link propagates out to Wikipedia's many mirrors we get excellent linkage. And, as a courtesy, be sure to add a reciprocal [[WikiPedia:X]] to the Wikivoyage article as well. (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:15, 4 Oct 2004 (EDT)

You can make an interwiki link [[Project:X]]. It'll appear in the text, not with the interlanguage links. -(WT-en) phma 10:07, 4 Oct 2004 (EDT)

Since that was written, a template called {{wikivoyage}} has been added (by Wikipedia user Patricknoddy) to Wikipedia which creates a much more eye-catching link. However that template assumes that the Wikipedia and Wikivoyage articles have identical names, and our different goals, granularity and disambiguation standards mean this isn't always the case. So I've just created a derivative template which allows you to specify the Wikivoyage article name. To use it, enter:

{{wikivoyagebyname|Wikivoyage article name}}

- (WT-en) Chris j wood 10:06, 17 Oct 2004 (EDT)

FYI: The Wikivoyage template is now listed under Templates for deletion, for the regrettably correct reason that Wikivoyage is not a Wikimedia project and should not get the Wikimedia-style boxes used by Wikiquote etc. External links are welcome though. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:34, 18 Oct 2004 (EDT)

Maybe. There is hardly a consensus for deletion there yet; hopefully common sense will prevail and we will either get to keep the templates as they are, or change them to generate simple external links. But it is probably wise not to use the templates any further until the Wikipedia consensus is determined. -- (WT-en) Chris j wood 11:51, 18 Oct 2004 (EDT)

Spanish Wikivoyage user (WT-es) Tequendamia has just reported on es: that the Spanish Wikipedia deleted the existing {{wikivoyage}} template and also removed all links to es: that had been recently added to Wikipedia articles. Their reasons apparently were:

1. It's not a WikiMedia project
2. The linked Spanish Wikivoyage articles were just stubs/outlines, with no real content yet

I don't follow w:es policies to judge if they're right or wrong but I guess this should work as a warning for us to be more careful about creating those templates and links there. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 19:12, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

We've been pretty careful on en: to avoid over-promoting Wikivoyage on Wikipedia. It's probably a good idea to treat Wikivoyage links like other external links on wp:, and not to be too pushy about them. --(WT-en) Evan 20:56, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

Uniting Wikivoyage with Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikibooks?

[Moved from Travellers' pub by (WT-en) Hypatia 17:30, 18 Dec 2004 (EST)]

I think that Wikivoyage should be eaten by the Wikimedia foundation, which owns the Wiki projects mentioned above. (I couldn't find an earlier discussion about this.) It seems to me that all Wiki projects, and especially Wikivoyage, should benefit from such a strong alliance. Personally I would have heard a lot earlier about Wikivoyage if it was already listed under the other Wiki projects. I'm not sure if this is possible by the differences between by-sa and GFDL though. What do you guys think? (WT-en) Georg Muntingh, 2 Aug 2004

No - disagree strongly. One of the reason I came here was because it wasn't run by the Wikimedia foundation and hence was more international etc. Also cc-by-sa is superior to the GFDL and the wikimedia foundation loves fair use images which are not useable outside the US. Apologies if this sounds like a rant. (WT-en) Caroline 14:42, 2 Aug 2004 (EDT)

1) Wikimedia is much more international than Wikivoyage. Wikipedia exists in 100 languages, while Wikivoyage exists in 5. 2) Both the Free Software Foundation and the Creative Commons projects are working on making the two licenses compatible to each other. 3) Only the English Wikipedia accepts fair use images.--Erik Möller

I dunno. Being "eaten" by Wikimedia doesn't really sound like the most positive experience.

I also think that it's good to have lots of different kinds of wikis hosted by lots of different organizations. A monoculture wouldn't necessarily be the healthiest wiki ecosystem. The SwitchWiki shows some tens of thousands of wikis on the Internet right now. I don't think Wikimedia should, or wants to, host and manage all those projects. --(WT-en) Evan 11:46, 3 Aug 2004 (EDT)

Okay, I see your points. (WT-en) Georg Muntingh 09:11, 4 Aug 2004 (EDT)

Actually, the number of wikis on SwitchWiki is on the order of thousands, not tens of thousands. It's right there on the page I linked to! Sloppy research on my part, but I think the point is still valid. --(WT-en) Evan 18:16, 19 Aug 2004 (EDT)

Removed bogus link

I removed this statement: Wikivoyage is not a project of the wikimedia foundation. The reason is explained here. There are a lot of reasons that Wikivoyage is not a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, but none of them are explained at that link. --(WT-en) Evan 13:12, 25 May 2005 (EDT)

Integrating as a Wikimedia project

I believe that integrating would be positive for all involved

• Would provide a secure funding base and reduce the need for google ads
• Increase editors as no google ads
• Would make it easier for the two sites to direct people adding content to the better place
• Would make Wikivoyage better know (lots of great content here in a useful format)
• Would thus speed up the development of the project
• Potentially increased reliability (I am having trouble viewing this site right now)

I cannot really think of any drawbacks. Wikimedia projects are now under the same license is here. --(WT-en) Doc James 10:25, 23 February 2012 (EST)

Wikipedia parameter in special tags

I propose that we add a Wikipedia parameter to the special tags <see>...</see>, <do>...</do>, <eat>...</eat>, <drink>...</drink>, <sleep>...</sleep>, <listing>...</listing>; please join the discussion at Wikipedia links in special tags. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:10, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikivoyage link icon

Swept here from the pub

I see that the icon being used for links to Wikivoyage from Wikipedia is the old one. I assume this should be updated to the new logo? I have requested an update to Sister-inline‎ and Sister templates.--Traveler100 (talk) 05:57, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Can you give me a link? If it's on enwp I can do it. --Rschen7754 06:01, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

wikipedia:Template:Sister-inline and wikipedia:Template:Sister need to be edited to update wikipedia:Template:Wikivoyage-inline and wikipedia:Template:Wikivoyage. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:24, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Done. --Rschen7754 06:28, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Though the original file File:Wikivoyage favicon.svg has had the new logo uploaded over it on Commons. --Rschen7754 06:35, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I believe w:Template:Wikivoyage was already displaying the correct icon. w:Template:Wikivoyage-inline was not, because the 12px thumbnail never got regenerated after the new logo was uploaded over the old. I tried several times to force it to regenerate but failed. Your solution certainly works, though. LtPowers (talk) 13:19, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

At the time I made the initial entry today both where showing the old.--Traveler100 (talk) 16:50, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

How did the English Wikivoyage solve the issue of not having duplicated sections which exist also in the English Wikipedia?

Swept in from the pub

Hi. I am one of the editors whom are currently trying to establish the Hebrew Wikivoyage in the incubator. Some of the content developers started recently to copying and pasting entire sections from the Hebrew Wikipedia, and a lot of them. Although they are doing so from a good intent, hoping that the readers would gradually rewrite those sections, I am mainly afraid that this would give the Hebrew Wikivoyage a bad reputation on the long run, as the duplicated content would lead the users to prefer using going straight to the Wikipedia articles instead. As this issue is currently in debate in the Hebrew Wikivoyage, I need to know in the meantime, how has the English Wikivoyage community solved the issue of not having duplicated sections which exists in both Wikivoyage and Wikipedia ? are there any firm rules about this issue ? how do you react when someone copies the entire "history" section from a city or country Wikipedia article to the same city or country's Wikivoyage article? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 01:00, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Shalom! Whenever we discover large-scaled, unattributed copy-and-paste jobs from Wikipedia, we delete them. See Kot Adu for a very recent example. However, there are cases in which Wikipedia content is copied but credited, and if it's relevant and properly formatted for Wikivoyage, that can be OK. Look at the bottom of this article for an example of a template that amounts to a citation of Wikipedia: Nagorno-Karabakh. The crucial things are: (1) All the copied content has to be relevant to a travel guide, not excessively encyclopedic; (2) Wikipedia or whichever other sister or non-sister Copyleft-licensed site must be credited; and (3) the contribution history of the cited article must be easily viewable from the Wikivoyage article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:10, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Policy created on the hoof?

Wikivoyage is targeted towards printed versions. We want travellers on the road to be able to print out a copy of an article and use it. The print version comes first!

I agree that the print version is important, but where and when did we ever decide that "The print version comes first!" ??? --118.93nzp (talk) 20:15, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Never, and I strongly disagree with that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:29, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Ikan Kekek, for making the appropriate change to the page in the light of the complete lack of a positive answer to my question: where and when did we ever decide that "The print version comes first!" ???. --118.93nzp (talk) 21:25, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Copying Content from Wikipedia

This follows from the Pub discussion on the topic of Copying and Pasting from Wikipedia.

Do we need clearer and more robust guidance regarding? :

A) Correct attribution for Wikipedia when Wikipedia content is copied? (This is currently very poorly followed)
B) More robust criteria before copying Wikipedia content (i.e. using selected parts vs. the entire history section of a town verbatim)

Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:29, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I think our content should always be reworded. Copying text usually doesn't mesh well into the guide (or makes it dull as others pointed out in the discussion). Furthermore, there is nothing lamer than copying text from other sites and it's quite a lazy way to contribute. It doesn't take much to take the same information and rewrite it in an original way, perhaps with a little additional research to add other interesting content.

In short: if I want to read Wikipedia articles, I'll go to Wikipedia. If I come to Wikivoyage, I want to read Wikivoyage articles. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:07, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

True. Another point is SEO. I'm wondering if too much replicated text makes Google think we are just another content farm and lower our overall score as a result. Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:53, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Proposed rewrite

Here's our current guidance - bullet points one and three are basically the same thing, and two seems unnecessary to me as I'm not clear why printability would be a concern when adding text to an article:

Am I free to take anything from Wikipedia and post it on Wikivoyage?

Basically yes, but there are a few things you need to think about before you start re-using anything from Wikipedia:

1. Wikivoyage is not a travel encyclopedia. This means that far from all information on Wikipedia fits Wikivoyage. Typical things you may use are different types of illustrations, history extracts for the "Understand" section in our articles (but then again: don't get tempted to post 250 kB of the entire history of any country or town!) or information about the climate of the place you're writing about.
2. Wikivoyage is targeted towards printed as well as online versions. We want travellers on the road to be able to print out a copy of an article and use it.
3. Make sure you check what you post. As stated above, what's on Wikipedia might not fit on Wikivoyage. So, before you copy and paste it to Wikivoyage, read it through and see if the information really is useful for a traveller. When in doubt - leave it out.

Here's a proposed re-write:

Am I free to take anything from Wikipedia and post it on Wikivoyage?

While sharing text between the two projects is legal provided the text is properly attributed, because the goals of the projects differ it is not a practice that is encouraged. Copying large blocks of text, or failing to to properly attribute anything taken from Wikipedia, will usually result in the edit being reverted. Some specific guidelines:

1. Copied text MUST be properly attributed. When copying text from Wikipedia (or any other CC-SA site) you must provide attribution to the original authors. Attribution is generally provided by pasting the URL for the source article into the "edit summary" box, and/or you can use the {{wikipedia}} template. It is a violation of the CC-SA license to copy text from Wikipedia without providing attribution, so be absolutely sure that attribution is provided.
2. Wikivoyage is not an encyclopedia. Since the goals of the two projects are very different, in most cases copying text from Wikipedia to Wikivoyage is not appropriate. In some cases it may make sense to distill portions of a Wikipedia article into a few paragraphs that can be included in a Wikivoyage "Understand" section, but copying more than that is probably too much. Before you copy and paste it to Wikivoyage, read it through and see if the information really is useful for a traveller. When in doubt - leave it out, and let readers follow the article's wiki link to Wikipedia if they want more background information.

The above needs some serious copyediting (note: text has since been updated), but I think it reflects current reality and is hopefully a useful starting point. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:10, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Great! I think that for point one violations of a CC-SA license should automatically result in a complete revert of that edit. No-one will 'clean it up' for you later. Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:45, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I think there should be greater emphasis on our strong preference for ORIGINAL writing if not an outright plea that authors AVOID copying text, regardless of proper attribution. Generally, it doesn't take much effort to rewrite something from Wikipedia or wherever in a way that is our own so that we don't have to provide attribution at all. Usually, if someone has to copy text verbatim from Wikipedia it means they are not familiar enough with the topic themselves. In such instances, I'd prefer they either research more so that they develop enough familiarity to write something original or focus their efforts elsewhere and just leave the article as-is rather than copying text. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 05:13, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Are there any specific reasons why we need to just plea to users not to do this?

I am trying to think of a legitimate scenario where the Wikipedia text should be copied and pasted, and can't think of one.

What I am trying to suggest is why not ban it outright? Andrewssi2 (talk) 08:30, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

There may be some instances in which a few facts about points of interest could be subject to quotes or near-quotes from Wikipedia. These should be kept to a minimum, but banning any amount of copying at all would go a bit too far. I do like the direction of this discussion, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:59, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Andrewssi2, the "Understand" section is usually where Wikipedia is most helpful. While I can't see that we would ever want to copy an entire Wikipedia article, I will often consolidate information from a Wikipedia article into a few paragraphs here. Note that even though the text has been significantly re-written, it is still based on content from Wikipedia and thus must be properly attributed. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:01, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

OK, I would admit that I often check an article's corresponding WP page to see if there is traveler relevant information that can be used. I guess even though I start again with my own words, it could still be considered a re-write. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:11, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Is there support for updating the policy page with the text above? If not, what changes are needed? While this text might not be perfect, it would seem to better reflect how we want Wikipedia text to be used than what is currently on the policy page. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:50, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I would suggest changing "will usually result in the edit being reverted" to "will result in the edit being reverted". Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:11, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I wonder about this. In that case, will articles started as copyvio from Wikipedia be automatically deleted? Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I would also prefer to allow for some flexibility so that we aren't automatically reverting good faith edits because someone didn't realize they had to add the {{wikipedia}} template to the article's talk page. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:00, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

As I said above, I'd prefer the tone to be discouraging of copying any information from WP. A sort of "You CAN do it, but PLEASE DON'T" tone. There is nothing on Wikipedia that we absolutely need to write verbatim here. As far as summarizations go, even in academic writing, you don't have to cite everything you take from other sources. It depends on what kind of information you're getting from Wikipedia. Much of the information we would take is common knowledge that any sources about the country/city would state. In those cases, you don't need to give citations. I'd say most of our information is made of summarizations from some source or sources, and I never see citations nor is it policy to cite summarized sources in the edit summary. If it were, I suspect we'd have to delete most of the site's content. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 15:40, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

ChubbyWimbus and Andrewssi2 - I've updated the proposed changes to make it clearer that the projects have different goals, and that in most cases copying text from Wikipedia is inappropriate. Is that better? -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:01, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

I think it's better. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:16, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, a great improvement to the existing text! Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:17, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

I like this rewrite! ChubbyWimbus (talk) 09:50, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Done Great, as there now seems to be agreement I've updated the policy page with the new text. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:21, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Unsure about:

Please note that if you want to copy something from Wikipedia (in your language version) to Wikivoyage in the same language (if there is one), you have to create a template in the actual language.

Policy from the English-language WV means nothing to WV in some other language; we're badly out-of-scope to suggest otherwise. K7L (talk) 19:46, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the reasoning was for requiring template translations - it appears to have been originally added by User:Riggwelter [1], so if he is still active hopefully he can comment. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:12, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

I am active. However, I am slightly unsure as to why I put it there in the first place, if it wasn't to make sure that you did not actually just copy something without thinking whether it was relevant for the local languager version or not. It's a long time ago, so I just can't remember! Riggwelter (talk) 17:03, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Copy and pasting content from Wikipedia?

Swept in from the pub

I noticed a recent edit has basically copied and pasted a great deal of content out of Wikipedia. I thought this was not within WV policy, however scanning through the guidance I can't see anything specifically against doing so. Can anyone else point me to the guidelines around this, should they exist? Andrewssi2 (talk) 14:55, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Here you go: Wikipedia#Sharing content ϒpsilon (talk) 15:12, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, that link states “Copy-pasting blocks of text from Wikipedia is very much discouraged, and will often be reverted”

Does that mean the edit that I highlighted should be removed? Andrewssi2 15:40, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. A few months back Saqib expanded some Pakistani article with text from WP, but he modified the text sufficiently and therefore it hadn't to be removed. I'll notify editor of the article and hopefully he'll comment or at least read this discussion and does something to his copypasted content. ϒpsilon (talk) 15:55, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Note, though, that the issue is not copyright infringement; the two sites have identical CC-by-SA licenses so legally we can copy as much as we like and WP can do the same to us. The question is whether the text serves out goals as a travel guide. Material that is useful in an encyclopedia entry quite often becomes useless clutter in a travel guide context.

I put a note on the editor's talk page asking him or her to look here. Pashley (talk) 16:18, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Pashley. Although my linking to his page in my last comment produced that red box in the upper right corner when he is logged in. ϒpsilon (talk) 16:23, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm back! Thank you for patience, Pashley! And thank you for everybody to trying clear this theme! I hope my work/copy " serves out goals as a travel guide", and I hope those are a allways enough "modified". With respect - Globetrotter19 (talk) 17:00, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I have serious doubts about this and many similar edits. They are rather useless for a travel guide, because travel guide should fascinate the reader and motivate him/her to travel. What we have instead is a long list of something that is very difficult to read because of the awkward language and/or irrelevant information. This article is a sublime example of how a travel guide should not look like. Feel excited? Will not even bother to scroll through it? Then keep in mind that there are at least hundred more churches stored in the sub-district articles. In fact, we had to go through all these lists for Moscow and found an astonishing number of mistakes that come from both Wikipedia and the author. For example, some churches are mentioned twice under slightly different names. This shows very clearly that the edit was more of a copy-paste nature than a thoughtful and creative writing that Wikivoyage needs.

This actually goes back to a more general problem that travel guides should be written by people with travel experience and by people with personal experience of a destination, or at least with some basic understanding of the region. But we are on a wiki, where everyone is free to edit, so we are doomed to see many articles turning into copy-paste garbage. I don't know what kind of a guideline could help here... --Alexander (talk) 18:11, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Even if there are no specific guidelines about Wikipedia copypasta that are enshrined in written policy, it bears remembering that this is what got the Telstra vandal userbanned. I'd say the de facto policy that we've been going by is that copy-pasting from Wikipedia is effectively prohibited unless there's a pretty damn convincing argument otherwise. Also, to add a point that's been overlooked: if you absolutely must copy-paste content from Wikipedia or any other copyleft source, it still has to be attributed (cf. the "BY" part of "CC-BY-SA"). -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:38, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

The content provided by Globetrotter19 was intended (I believe) to provide some good context to the city.

However we should bear in mind that some Wikipedians do ask the question 'Why Wikivoyage?', and the wholesale copying of content may make us look like an encyclopedic wannabe rather than a serious travel guide.

That is not to say we shouldn't source some content from WikiPedia articles, but we should at least rewrite them in a travel orientated manner that is more concise. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:05, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

To Andrewssi2: Agreed. What I was arguing against in my comment was copy-pasting large swaths of unedited Wikipedia content wholesale, which, even if legally defensible when properly attributed, does indeed make us look like a cheap knockoff of Wikipedia. That's to be avoided, and I think it might even be good to codify that in policy. However, I agree with you that there's nothing wrong with an author who merely adds content that is ultimately sourced from Wikipedia, but recontextualized and put into his own words. There is, after all, some degree of overlap between what's appropriate for Wikipedia and what's appropriate for Wikivoyage, and no one "owns" facts in any way that's applicable to intellectual property law. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:36, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Great, I agree it would be good to codify somehow. Wikipedia#Sharing content is ambiguous in that it only says that copying content 'may' be reverted, but does not indicate under what circumstances or criteria. Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:05, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

De facto, I'd suspect that users stumbling across Wikivoyage already have Wikipedia (as many of them found us from Wikipedia) and WV as a duplicate of WP serves no purpose. We need to distinguish ourselves from other wikis by offering something that Wikipedia is w:WP:NOT - for instance, a "how to" instruction or a travel guide. WP is a good source for the history of a place (and we might want a brief summary for use by travellers who print our articles for packing in carry-on baggage), but if we're not adding value beyond the WP writeup then why bother? K7L (talk) 12:05, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

It seems that we are in violent agreement. Shall we take it to Wikivoyage talk:Cooperating with Wikipedia in order to distill our thoughts, or is there a better policy article for this? Andrewssi2 (talk) 12:24, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Started here Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:38, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Links from WP to WV

Anyone knows why WP articles don't have links to corresponding WV articles? I did some random checking and between 1/2 to 2/3 didn't have it. And some have the sister projects box but there's no VW link in there (example: Naples). Jjtkk (talk) 09:06, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

The sibling projects box is an ugly hack as it defaults to blindly linking Special:Search on various wikis. I presume we want the {{wikivoyage}} or {{wikivoyage-inline}} templates, which always provide a direct interwiki link (to the article, not the search page). That said, we have traditionally avoided spamming WP with links until the destination article is at least usable status, as promoting "X is in Y {{subst:smallcity}}" outline stubs only makes us look bad. That said, once articles reach usable status we should be adding a link each direction. Finding these might be a good job for a 'bot, if it hasn't been done? K7L (talk) 15:34, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

I'd say our Naples article ain't bad. Don't know about the bot. Jjtkk (talk) 16:17, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Also our articles don't map neatly into WP. For example we might roll up a few residential districts of a large city into a single article, whereas WP would list each district regardless of how notable it is from a travel perspective.

I agree that it would be good to have a bot at least identify some of the 'Usable' WV articles that are not currently linked from WP. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 07:35, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Possibility of a "Sister projects" report in the Wikipedia Signpost

Swept in from the pub

Hello, all I'm a volunteer at the Wikipedia Signpost, the Wikimedia movement's biggest internal newspaper. Almost all of our coverage focuses on Wikipedia, with occasional coverage of Commons, the Meta-Wiki, MediaWiki, Wikidata, the the Wikimedia Labs; we have little to nothing to say about Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, or Wikivoyage. I'm interested in writing a special long-form "sister projects" report to try and address this shortfall. Is there anyone experienced in the Wikivoyage project with whom I can speak with, perhaps over Skype, about the mission, organization, history, successes, troubles, and foibles of being a contributor to this project? If so, please drop me a line at my English Wikipedia talk page. Thanks! ResMar 21:04, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Addendum, actually we have a lot of coverage of Wiki Voyage, but only with respect to the initial set-up process. Since then we've been relatively mute and I'd like to revisit the topic. Resident Mario (talk) 21:11, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like a great idea. Who wants to volunteer? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:48, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I will do it, Mario. Harlan888 (talk) 19:27, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Nothing against you, Harlan, but I'm hoping to get experienced Wikivoyagerians (Wikivoyagers?) with an understanding of the strategic organization and direction of the project sufficiently advanced for them to be able to impress it upon others, and you only have a handful of edits at the moment... Resident Mario (talk) 02:31, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Hey, he's better than an experienced WVger, as according to his profile he is a guru! —The preceding comment was added by PrinceGloria (talk • contribs)

I would like to participate. I am an avid reader of the Signpost and a long-time editor here (and at WT before that), particularly involved in dynamic maps, data exchange and other modernization projects. I used to be known as Nicolas1981. Syced (talk) 06:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello Nicholas, I was wondering where you've been... At any rate, if more than 1 person would be needed, I am very open to be questioned or asked to write something. In case you would consider it helpful, please leave me your questions on my talk page. Thanks! PrinceGloria (talk) 08:18, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@PrinceGloria: To keep myself from getting too swamped I'm keeping to one interview per project at the moment. I will almost certainly do a second round a little later on, so you're on my list :). Resident Mario (talk) 15:36, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

WT links in Wikipedia

Swept in from the pub

I just noticed a link to WT in Wikipedia (here) and I guess there are many others. I unfortunately have no time to fix them right now, but any volunteer for the task? That's one of the only easy ways we have to increase WV traffic, so not doing it would be a shame.

• Go to https://www.wikipedia.org and for EACH language's wikipedia (there are many):
• Find the search box, type "wikitravel" in it and type Enter
• Ignore any article which is actually about Wikitravel itself
• Open each article that contains a link to WT
• Find and click the Edit button or press Alt+Shift+e
• Press CTRL-f and find the WT link
• Find the equivalent article on WV
• Replace the WT URL with the WV URL

Please let us know as an answer here what languages' Wikipedias you have processed, so that work is not duplicated, thanks a lot! Syced (talk) 06:18, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

I suggest to use this link for the second step (using the equivalent link for each language). --Andyrom75 (talk) 06:41, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry to ask the question, but does our status as a sister project allow us to do this?

I would guess that under normal circumstances Wikipedia wouldn't appreciate a website changing the links of a competitor to their own. I hope that I'm wrong in this instance. Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:49, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Such changes have been already performed in the past in thousands of occurrences in several languages, and if I'm recalling it correctly, it has been discussed here on en:voy as well.

Briefly, (just for example) if an article of a city mention the WT external link as a source of information, it can be easily substitute it with the equivalent in the same language adding maybe the one related to the official language of that city (e.g. in fr:w Moscow article, the WT link could be replaced with the fr:voy and maybe ru:voy ones). Clearly, be sure that the page exists and use internal wikilink instead of external links that between sister projects doesn't make a lot of sense.--Andyrom75 (talk) 07:47, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

This was likely done once, a couple of years ago. See Wikivoyage talk:Search Expedition. Many of the WT links which were left behind are on talk or project pages, where changing other people's comments was likely deliberately avoided. Certainly, WP doesn't want links in articles to point to an external, commercial site where that site merely mirrors content already in one of WMF's own projects, as that sort of external link is spammy. They also wouldn't want a wiki or other user-editable content cited as a reliable source for anything, so the only place these should occur in actual articles (other than the pages about WV and WT) is in "external links". K7L (talk) 16:12, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

I would still be quite upset if somebody did such semi-automatic link changes in my home wiki (at least if I were not active here). Changing external links to sister project links providing the same information should not controversial (in articles), but if the WT article is more complete or contains some key information absent from our article, then it surely is. --LPfi (talk) 12:16, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

There were a rare few languages which were problematic because they didn't fork during the main WT to WV transition; Japanese was one, so links to WT in that language were often left alone. User boxes claiming "user so-and-so edits on Japan WT" were the usual issue, although some other rarely-edited languages were affected. K7L (talk) 12:51, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

I looked through en.wp's list. There were very few in articles, and even fewer that should be converted. Either it was pointless spam (usually claiming to be a reliable source) or a link to WT was actually required (e.g., for copyright/license attribution). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

It seems sv-wp has quite a lot of links (in the External links section). Was that one of the problematic ones? The normal sister project links should go to the Swedish versions of the projects (where most pages are stubs), so the voy:en links probably have to be treated (although not formatted) as normal external links. For destinations where our version is at least as good as WT changing the links should be no problem, as long as the edit summary is adequate, but I suppose WT can be better in some cases. Does anybody have a bot that could see whether any substantial edits have been done on WT after the fork? --LPfi (talk) 20:51, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I see no need to have a bot look at WT, as any links to sv: which were left unchanged were likely missed by mistake. Swedish was one of the first half-dozen or so languages for m:Wikivoyage#Creation, so there's no reason to keep a link to basically the same content on a competing external project. Finnish is one of the problem ones (like Japanese, there is no WV) and maybe Swedish was presumed (inadvertently and incorrectly) to be part of that same issue? Certainly, any of the languages which were created on WV late (such as Chinese) are worth verifying to make sure the external links were changed to point here. K7L (talk) 21:25, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

"On a competing external project" with an antipathetic attitude toward the WMF and a history of real-world legal antagonism, no less. That's a salient point that, IMO, overrides any comparatively minor concerns about tampering with WP article content (a line of thinking that smacks of article ownership issues anyway). -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:55, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I changed thousands of WT links to WV links more than a year back. I cannot figure out how to write in the other direction and therefore did not do Persian and Arabic. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:27, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Anyone with RTL experience and willing to do this? user:Saqib maybe? :-) Syced (talk) 06:54, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

What is RTL? I'm travelling by the way. --Saqib (talk) 11:41, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

"Right To Left". The interaction between words with Latin characters (such as most URL:s) and neighbouring text in Arabic & al is quite confusing for those not used to it. --LPfi (talk) 13:55, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Sure, will do. Please let me know what to do. --Saqib (talk) 04:40, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Basically go to Wikipedias that have RTL languages and search for Wikitravel. Arabic only has a couple left [2]. Likewise Farsi [3] and Hebrew [4]. Replace these links with WV ones if possible. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Doc: Sorry for late response as I'm travelling these days. So please check if this is that you want me to do? --Saqib (talk) 13:49, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Hum yes appears to be resistance. Likely we need someone in good standing in that community to help us. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:18, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Adapting suitable little bits from Wikipedia articles

Swept in from the pub

Is editing such as this acceptable here? I adapted some text from the relevant section of the Wikipedia article, as it seemed to cover the information needed. Sorry if it isn't. Thanks, --Rubbish computer (talk) 02:17, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

It's OK to paraphrase and summarize from Wikipedia articles, though extensive quoting is frowned upon. When in doubt, mention the Wikipedia article in your edit summary. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:01, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: Thank you. --Rubbish computer (talk) 03:33, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

You're very welcome. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

In the case the result looks very good I would say :-) Syced (talk) 12:31, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

It should go without saying that Wikivoyage employs a different WV:tone from Wikipedia and some information is simply not relevant for travel. But judging from the edit in question you already know that. Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:14, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Mentioning Wikipedia in the edit summary is good if it's just a loose paraphrase. If you're taking content directly from Wikipedia, either as a direct quotation or as a close paraphrase, it would be best to link to the page AND REVISION on Wikipedia. (You get a link to the revision by clicking "Permanent link" on the Wikipedia article's sidebar.) Powers ^(talk) 15:08, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikivoyage listings with articles on Wikipedia

Swept in from the pub

Does anyone know a way of seeing how many listings on Wikivoyage destination articles have an article on Wikipedia? Wondering about the amount of data to be created if we do links in both directions. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:20, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

I recently counted that for 2 random articles. Each article had about 3 listings with an equivalent Wikipedia article. So I guess the total number would be around 50,000.

Counting listings with a Wikidata property might give a better approximation... but we only have 46 on the English Wikivoyage haha. The French Wikivoyage has 8675 Wikipedia+Wikidata attributes for 56504 listings, so if we reach the same ratio we could have ~40,000 for our 273871 listings. Syced (talk) 06:38, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Linking to listings from Wikipedia

Swept in from the pub

An idea to increase the links from Wikipedia to this site. Take a look at Wikipedia:Eiffel tower#External links. Proposal is to add to the Wikivoyage listing template that if a wikidata code entry exists it creates an html anchor. Can then add link template on the Wikipedia page (should be possible to create one that needs no manual parameter input). --Traveler100 (talk) 07:58, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

I implemented something like this: Special:Diff/3076972. See Turda#Q18547952. -- T.seppelt (talk) 08:57, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

@T.seppelt: Great, thanks. I have created Wikipedia:Template:Wikivoyage-listing; just need to add the Wikivoyage page name to the template to get the info box with link to the listing. For example {{Wikivoyage-listing|Paris/7th arrondissement}} on the Wikipedia Eiffel Tower page will create box with link directly to the See listing on the Wikivoyage page. --Traveler100 (talk) 09:26, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Great. Probably one could run a bot on enwiki to replace the old template with yours when the respective article is mentioned in a Wikivoyage article. -- T.seppelt (talk) 09:39, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

w:Eiffel Tower (as an example) uses w:Template:sisterlinks, so the new w:Template:Wikivoyage-listing might look out of place. Is there any way to modify Template:Sisterlinks to link to the listing anchor in certain cases? Powers ^(talk) 15:37, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

It did not use sister links when I wrote this entry earlier in the day. Being counteracted by another user. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:49, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

I have requested an update to the sister links page (do not have admin there). In mean time see example at w:Tower of London#External links (as long as not counteracted there too). --Traveler100 (talk) 17:04, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Why did you create a new one instead of adding this functionality to w:en:Template:Wikivoyage? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

I thought it was easier to type a different name for listings rather than articles that add some type of parameter option to the original template. But thinking about it more, could always generate the wikidata page code, if it is to article rather than a listing in an article the anchor tag will not exist in the page so will default to top of the page. Guess could merge them.--Traveler100 (talk) 17:05, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Sister links For what it's worth, I combine sister link templates into the one w:en:Template:Sisterlinks on en.wp. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:14, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

What was the value of switching it during this conversation? --Traveler100 (talk) 17:18, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

@Traveler100: I just happened to notice it. I don't want to edit your comments but if you want, you can just refer others to the permanent link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eiffel_Tower&oldid=746913917#External_links —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:27, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Now w:Template:sisterlinks works with listings. Also so does w:en:Template:Wikivoyage and w:en:Template:Wikivoyage-inline, however w:Template:Wikivoyage-listing works with less parameter inputs. Basically on the Wikipedia side you just need to enter the Wikivoyage page name. If on the the Wikivoyage page the listing of the Wikipeida page has an entry for the Wikidata parameter the link will jump directly to that part of the page, otherwise the top of the page will be displayed. --Traveler100 (talk) 14:23, 4 November 2016 (UTC)