Wikivoyage talk:Deletion policy/Archive 2014-2019

Articles created as copyvio text

From Wikivoyage:Deletion policy#Speedy deletion: "If the name is okay but the article content is a copyright violation, it should be blanked and replaced with a template, not deleted."

Isn't this making more work for admins in the long run, instead of less? WP's approach seems to be to revert to the last clean version (without the copyvio) but, if every version is bad, speedily delete the page. That avoids keeping unnecessary copyvios in the article history, as would occur if one just pastes another pointless empty skeleton over a copyvio to hide the problem. The concern is that a page is created as copyvio (with possibly other issues, such as self-promotion or spam), a skeleton is pasted over it, a valid article is pasted over that and only later someone objects to the copyvios in the article history and demands an admin remove them. That leaves a mess - the admin must look at the history, delete the page, then undelete the revisions which are not copyvios or derivative works of the original copyvio. The end result is more work than if we allowed copyvios with no history to which to revert to be speedily deleted. K7L (talk) 17:43, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

An alternative would be If the name is okay (it is a real place) but the article content is a copyright violation, it should be speedy deleted to eliminate the violation. Then there is a judgment call on the significance of the place — it might be left without an article, replaced with a redirect, or replaced with a template to encourage future development of a real article. Pashley (talk) 18:00, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I'd be fine with Pashley's suggestion to make it a judgement call. Even if it is not exactly according to policy, I think people have been speedy deleting copyvios for some time - it is one of the deletion rationales in the delete drop-down. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:22, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm okay with speedy deleting copyvios as long as the article is recreated at the same time (assuming it's a valid topic). Powers ^(talk) 18:07, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Why not re-create it once we have some actual content that isn't plagiarism, vandalism or spam? K7L (talk) 18:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Haven't we been over this? Powers ^(talk) 19:03, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Speedy delete imported user pages with no contributions

Per User talk:Texugo#Delete, would there be any objection to modifying the speedy deletion policy to allow deletion of any WT imported user pages where the user has no contributions? The point of importing those pages was for attribution purposes, so if there are no contributions then there is nothing to attribute. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:01, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Or where their only contributions were to their own userpage.

I had started looking through the first few hundren manually but really needs to be a database query to find the complete list. Anyway, there's a few more. -- WOSlinker (talk) 23:13, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

• User:(WT-en) Abu jubayer
• User:(WT-en) Absmarbo
• User:(WT-en) Ablancog
• User:(WT-en) Abidashahul and User talk:(WT-en) Abidashahul
• User:(WT-en) AbeWhite and User talk:(WT-en) AbeWhite
• User:(WT-en) 5nblues
• User:(WT-en) A1nasir
• User:(WT-en) A1kynaston and User talk:(WT-en) A1kynaston
• User:(WT-en) AGarrett
• User:(WT-en) AXON
• User:(WT-en) AWOL
• User:(WT-en) ASU RTM404 AV
• User:(WT-en) ASU RTM404 KH
• User:(WT-en) Aaronb and User talk:(WT-en) Aaronb

Sounds like a fine idea to me. Pashley (talk) 01:07, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Is there any point to doing so beyond reducing our "registered users" statistic? It's also worth noting that some of these accounts may have deleted contributions, in which case we really ought to maintain them for attribution purposes. Powers ^(talk) 02:04, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Special:DeletedContributions/(WT-en) Ablancog is not empty, for example. But deleting the pages has no effect on the "registered users" statistic. --Rschen7754 04:17, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

The biggest advantage would be to get rid of unneeded cruft - the pages were not created on this site, are not pages for users here, and serve no purpose other than to clutter up userspace. It is highly unlikely we would ever restore a deleted contribution from a user who has no other active contributions, so there shouldn't be any concerns about attribution for that scenario. -- Ryan • (talk) • 07:35, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if I'd say it's highly unlikely. There's always a possibility. Powers ^(talk) 01:55, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Most often, the orphaned user pages are left from someone who either looks around briefly and leaves or someone who creates User:Hell (Hades) Convention and Visitors Bureau, dumps one page of copypasta Hell's beautiful sunsets and friendly staff make it a magnificent romantic wonderland the entire family will adore and then leaves in less time than it takes for this one page to be deleted as spam. If the destination is re-created, it'll be more likely by dumping a {{smallcity skeleton}} on a blank page and walking away instead of restoring problematic text and the corresponding WT attribution. K7L (talk) 19:56, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

For that matter, what about vandalism-only accounts? Special:Contributions/(WT-en) ALT wikignome was a page-move vandal active (and immediately blocked) in July 2008. The corresponding user pages are presumably not useful to us. K7L (talk) 02:41, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Non-latin scripts in article names

There is a current vfd discussion for ஆவலப்பம்பட்டி which is a native language redirect to some small town in South India. To my surprise, the discussion has become quite long & complex.

I think that, as a matter of policy, any article title (redirect or not) in a non-latin script should be speedily deleted, no discussion needed. Can we amend the policy? Pashley (talk) 01:46, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Would you mind to summarize the points from that discussion that support amending the policy ? Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:19, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

The discussion itself is at Wikivoyage:Votes_for_deletion#.E0.AE.86.E0.AE.B5.E0.AE.B2.E0.AE.AA.E0.AF.8D.E0.AE.AA.E0.AE.AE.E0.AF.8D.E0.AE.AA.E0.AE.9F.E0.AF.8D.E0.AE.9F.E0.AE.BF; there are quite a few arguments, on both sides. Some are:

• It's a bad precedent to allow non-Latin alphabet names be used as redirects in English-language Wikivoyage. I don't think we should do that for Chinese characters, either. ... Ikan Kekek
• I believe the redirect policy supports having these redirects. ... TeleComNasSprVen
• We have never permitted foreign-language redirects, and it should be added to the policy if it's not there. All properly written articles will have the native language script of the city name at the top, so [a search will work].
• We don't create foreign language redirects for a few reasons. First, if someone is looking up travel information about Norway in Chinese, it's safe to assume they want the information in Chinese in which case, our redirects are not even helpful and they should simply go to the Chinese version of the site. More importantly, there are many many languages out there, and we don't want to encourage the creation of thousands of redirects to every article in every language. ChubbyWimbus
• Common sense would surely say this is english wikivoyage and foreign scripts are not utilised in redirects. sats
• Hmm, there seems to be an aspect of this that we haven't covered yet. Isn't it possible someone will input an abusive redirect title into the search bar, create the foreign equivalent of say "shit" in another language, and then redirect it to so-and-so article, with no one being able to check the vandalism since they don't speak the language? ... TeleComNasSprVen

There is a whole lot more as well. Pashley (talk) 13:43, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

For a list of affected pages, see this comment:

• You can see a number of other things that have been redirected in the past from their cyrillic, arabic, and chinese names at the bottom of this page. Texugo

I think all those are speedy delete candidates. Pashley (talk) 14:22, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Speedy deletion is normally for non-controversial items - articles created as spam, vandalism, plagiarism or personal attack. If there's discussion but no consensus on VfD, odds are it's controversial enough that it's not a speedy deletion candidate. K7L (talk) 17:25, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Sure, and I also feel we can't just change policy, quickly, when it's clearly not a non-controversial matter. That said, however, deleting non-latin scripts seems less controversial than non-English names, although I'm not yet convinced there aren't instances where it's useful to travellers. Checking such titles is the biggest problem, I guess. I would oppose any wide precedent of deleting non-English redirects en masse, but non-latin ones... that seems more reasonable. JuliasTravels (talk) 23:21, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree, since it was the lack of due process (and possibly high handed attitudes) in the previous discussion that concerned me. Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:27, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the report from Texugo is important. There are very few present instances of non-latin redirects, and most seem to be major Chinese cities.

I would ask the policy revision consider the following:

• Wikipedia allows non-latin redirects. We can of course have a different policy, although making it clear for Wikipedians would be a good idea.
• We need to define 'latin script'. Are extended latin characters such as Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship permissible as a redirect name under the new policy? Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:27, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the second point is rather easily answered with a "yes". The western alphabet, with or without diacritics (at the criteria of our naming conventions, is already acceptable even for page titles, so of course that applies to redirects too. Texugo (talk) 00:41, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to be pedantic but just want to get this right. naming conventions says for Tokyo that we should use "Tokyo, not Tōkyō or 東京". Where does that leave Tōkyō? (with the 'ō' character) Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:46, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

There are a bunch of those, mostly handled just fine if a bit inconsistently. We have Düsseldorf, for example, with redirects from Duesseldorf and Dusseldorf, Warsaw with a redirect from Warszawa, Kraków with a redirect from Cracow. I think those should all be kept, and in any case they aren't the non-latin characters that are the main topic here. As I see it, Tōkyō would be fine as a redirect — probably pointless, but it helps SEO — but not as the main article title. Pashley (talk) 03:08, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Right. I think as long as policy is clear that all latin characters are allowed (including diacritics) for redirects then we should be covered fine. Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:24, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, so is this a sign that we are reaching a consensus on making a distinction between allowing latin script redirects and disallowing non-latin redirects, or were you just getting clarification on what stipulations there were regarding the latin redirects? ChubbyWimbus (talk) 04:48, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I think everyone is in agreement at least that non-English Latin-script redirects are allowable under current policy; as pointed out, they are allowable titles for even regular articles to have, with their English conventional non-diacritic titles pointing to them. The more contentious issue, that of non-Latin redirects, should be discussed here. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 09:25, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I'd suggest reading the thread once more. It is trying to make clear the scope of the policy change. Andrewssi2 (talk) 10:32, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Is this referring to non-latin scripts for redirect titles or article names? I think redirect titles should be a different consideration than article names. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 20:57, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Article names in non-latin scripts (Chinese, Arabic, etc.) are already not allowed on the English WV. This discussion is strictly about redirects. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 00:09, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

I think sufficient discussion has taken place. Unless anyone else has strong feelings about this then I think consensus to adjust Redirect policy wording to not allow non-Latin characters (whilst still permitting extended Latin character sets that include diacritic) has been reached. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:23, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

@Andrewssi2: I think that the wording for the redirect policy page should be as follows:

Titles in non-Latin scripts:

• Redirect titles in non-Latin scripts that are the local language name of the redirect target as it appears in the lede of the article are discouraged on English Wikivoyage and may be subject to a Votes for Deletion discussion.
• All other titles in non-Latin scripts may be subject to speedy deletion - titles where no equivalent name in Latin script has existed should be transliterated into an appropriate Latin-script name."

This acknowledges at least the presence of a small consensus that redirects in non-Latin scripts which appear in the lede of the article title are allowed, but also discouraged from creation as being controversial and subject to VfD. The consensus is in line with the majority that any other type of non-Latin redirect/article title is explicitly disallowed. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 08:31, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't agree with your proposed wording. I realize that a few people object to redirects like Napoli redirecting to Naples, but I think they're totally fine if they're in Latin letters. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:49, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Ikan on the first one. Munchen and Napoli (for example) should remain as redirects because that is how they are widely known to many people who are not native English speakers. Perhaps I have misunderstood the intention? Andrewssi2 (talk) 11:49, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused. I thought I made it clear I was referring to non-Latin titles?

"Titles in non-Latin scripts"

"All other titles in non-Latin scripts..."

--TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 16:48, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

If the intent is to allow the accented versions of any Latin character, say so explicitly. I doubt that ã and ñ existed in imperial Rome, but they are valid for use in Portuguese and Spanish place names, respectively. Is the intent to allow Latvian text (which uses the Western characters, but with accents) while prohibiting or discouraging Ukranian names (which, like Russian, are Cyrillic) and Greek (which has its own character set)? If so, say so. Montréal, Québec is non-ASCII but is permitted. K7L (talk) 16:57, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

I am referring to non-Latin scripts, not edge cases for the definitions of "Latin script": 北京 --TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 17:09, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

That's not clear from the text, which mentions "non-Latin scripts" but does not define whether modifying the characters with accents or diacritics could render them non-Latin. K7L (talk) 17:32, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Right. 北京 is (clearly) a non-latin script. London uses a latin script. München and Montréal use an 'extended' latin script. We want the policy proposal to deny 北京 but allow Montréal. Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:00, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

It looks like this policy was never written into Wikivoyage:Redirect. It would be very helpful if it could be. Does anyone object to the following?

All article titles on this site, including redirects, should be in Latin script or extended Latin script. No redirects should be made in non-Latin alphabets or characters, and any such redirects shall be subject to speedy deletion.

And User:TeleComNasSprVen, sorry for misreading your proposed wording over 2 years ago. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:48, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I realize non-Latin redirects are hard to police, but with the variety in romanization schemes it seems like it might be a good idea to include a definitive local-language name as a redirect. Powers ^(talk) 22:56, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Taking that "exception" to its logical conclusion could result in thousands of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Russian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, Bengali, Tamil, Sinhalese, Burmese - shall I go on? - redirects. I understand your point of view but fairly strongly oppose your proposal and would instead suggest that in cases in which a variety of different Romanizations are used, there should be redirects from all Romanizations to the one that's most used in English. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:17, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

(indent) The definitive local name in its local language should always be placed at the top directly beside the name in the header. It will show up in the search engine if you search it. For example, if you type or copy and paste 津山, Tsuyama correctly appears as the first (and only) result. The same occurs for Владивосто́к (Vladivostok), சென்னை (Chennai), قم (Qom), and now that I added አክሱም, you can find Axum via the Amharic search. Of course there are many holes where nobody added the names, but I think it's a much better solution. If the traveler has to use the search engine, it doesn't mean we've failed them. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 15:21, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

I agree fully with ChubbyWimbus. Is there anyone other than Powers who would like to approve the creation of potentially thousands of non-Roman redirects? Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:47, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

OK, that came across as a little snippy. :-) So, more importantly, is there anyone else who would support adding this phrasing to Wikivoyage:Redirect and note on the deletion policy page that all articles in non-Roman scripts, including redirects, will be subject to speedy deletion?

All article titles on this site, including redirects, should be in Latin script or extended Latin script. No redirects should be made in non-Latin alphabets or characters, and any such redirects shall be subject to speedy deletion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:36, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't want this comment to derail consensus building, so please don't read it as an "oppose", but I've read through this full thread and don't understand what problem these foreign language redirects are seen as creating. Wikipedia has a larger editor group dealing with these sorts of issues, and their redirect policy doesn't seem to include any language against non-Latin redirects - w:東京 is a redirect to w:Tokyo, for example. To your earlier point about thousands of non-Latin redirects potentially being created, I'm not sure that would actually happen, but if it did I guess I don't understand what harm it would do. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:57, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

I guess there's no consensus, after the very long vfd thread that's linked at the top of this section. The harm is that, unlike Wikipedia, we don't have thousands of editors who read every conceivable type of writing (the "larger editor group" you allude to), so policing non-Roman characters, syllabaries and alphabets is not reasonable. But if there's no damn consensus, I'm ready to say the hell with it and ignore all foreign redirects. I don't want to devote more time to this if we won't get anywhere, so as far as I'm concerned, unless there's an overwhelming number of people who disagree, now that there are two people opposed to (or at least not supportive of) this, you win. Meanwhile, you might want to go to vfd and vote to keep some of the non-Roman redirects I nominated for deletion, and perhaps you'd like to nominate ஆவலப்பம்பட்டி for undeletion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:24, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't have any opinion either way. For most readers of English Wikivoyage, non-Latin script redirects are useless. On the other hand, unlike articles, redirects as such are "invisible" so they don't do any harm. Maybe they are even helpful in raising our Google ranking in some way? Just my 2 cents. ϒpsilon (talk) 06:36, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

The "checking" is an issue, I guess, but in most cases Wikipedia can help with that. I'm not sure about the ranking effects but transliteration is a very real concern. Everyone who is familiar with languages like Korean, Russian and Arabic knows that the rules are confusing and especially locals, even when they understand English, often enough don't apply the official transliteration rules exactly. Now, this is not a real problem for well-known metropoles, I guess, but it is for random other towns. I've always felt we should try to include all reasonable transliteration options in our redirects, but redirects for "misspellings" have also been subject to objections. The result does seem very US/Euro-centric to me, while redirects are harmless and basically free. If you ask any relevant Wikimedia techie, they laugh at you for even asking if creating many redirects has any noticeable effect on server use. I think including the official non-latin name of a place as a redirect has obvious benefits for non-native English speakers and no real downsides. JuliasTravels (talk) 11:05, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

(indent) Is Wikipedia helping with things like that? I don't notice Wikipedia helping, but if Wikipedia is helping, can we assign them the task of adding the names to all of the articles, which is at least something non-debatable regarding whether we want them or not. It would also make much more sense as a precursor to implementing foreign redirects in at the very least, the name IN the article could be checked against the redirect. Right now, the whole thing is a bit broken. Depending on what articles you look at, you might not even know that it is necessary. And again, if the articles are written correctly, the native language will already be a viable search option that will show them the results. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:52, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

I just meant it's easy enough to check when you don't know the language, as most of those names are simply on Wikipedia (if they are not yet in our own article in the first place). It's perfectly true that in most cases the search engine will help find the article, although it's not always the first hit, especially when the character combination is also part of similarly names oblasts, regions, districts etc. In that sense, it's not necessary to find an article, but the same is true for non-English-but-Latin-alphabet names like Köln or Den Haag, which get redirects without any debate. The distinction seems artificial. Don't get me wrong; I don't think anyone is suggesting an expedition to create a large number of non-Latin redirects, and I wouldn't suggest it. All I meant is that it's not worth debating if someone has created one. And in that spirit, I'll back out of this discussion now ;-) JuliasTravels (talk) 12:42, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

If we're agreed that non-Roman local names should be included in the lede, then I don't see what additional maintenance problems are posed by including them as redirects. Said redirects should match the name in the lede; anything else could probably be subjected to deletion discussion. Powers ^(talk) 20:09, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Deleting NEW empty articles

There is a consensus above for deleting empty articles but it appears to be based on articles imported from WikiTravel. Do we have a policy on new articles created that have no information except introductory sentence? Yes we should give some grace time to let people add information over a week or so, but how long should an empty page stay? before vote for deletion? --Traveler100 (talk) 20:03, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Indefinitely. At most they should be redirected. Powers ^(talk) 20:25, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

For the record, User:Traveler100 is referring to the articles I've created during the last couple of days when trying to find an article for each UNESCO World Heritage Site in the world. In many cases the site can be put in an article that already exists, but for 1. sites made up of several smaller sites (e.g. "Late Baroque Towns of the Val di Noto ") where half of them already have an article and 2. national parks I prefer to make new articles. Will make a new run through the list and add photos, perhaps banners and some more info and perhaps turn some of those articles into redirects, but I will need a couple of weeks. ϒpsilon (talk) 21:31, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

That should be fine. As Powers said, while we don't encourage the creation of large numbers of empty articles without the intent to give them at least some content, we don't delete articles about real places. If there's no real chance of them getting more info in the (near) future, we might redirect, but that's about it. The deletion round discussed above was indeed an exception in the light of the WT footers etc. JuliasTravels (talk) 21:57, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I understand where you are coming from Traveler100 , and it is annoying to see a skeleton article created just because someone could and then didn't bother to develop. Nevertheless, articles are valid if they refer to a real destination, and the motive of the creator is not relevant.

I support redirecting if needed (i.e. a very small village might be part of a larger town.) --Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:17, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

ϒpsilon, please do not take personally. On the whole I think the UNESCO project is a good one. Just the recent increase prompted me to bring up a topic that has been on my mind for a while. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:11, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

The imported WT skeletons were a special case as we needed to lose the attribution to WT on pages where WT provided no useful content. That said, there are instances where real places have been deleted - if they are created as page creation vandalism, covering tiny places which have nothing to see or do and credibly could not ever be articles (for instance, a list of every population-100 speck on a map of Maine). A place with a UNESCO listing will usually be a legitimate destination, although a few may encounter the "can you sleep there?" problem if they're tiny Red Bay, Labrador sized hamlets, at worst they'd be redirected (so Red Bay is listed at Forteau, which does have an inn, until we find closer lodging). K7L (talk) 12:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Completely empty skeletons

Special:Contributions/122.3.179.89 created several completely empty new articles last night, none of which even have the [[Region Name]] value from the template replaced with an actual region name (see also [1]). While our policy has always been to not delete articles about real places, at the same time we discourage users from creating multiple empty skeleton articles without adding content to them. I think it may be time to update our speedy deletion criteria to allow for deletion of articles that are nothing more than an empty template, provided the creator has been given sufficient time to work on the article, since these articles contain no useful content and thus (at best) create work for others to categorize and clean up, and (at worst) confuse readers by creating empty articles for places that may already be covered elsewhere. I would propose updating the "speedy deletion" criteria with something like the following under Wikivoyage:Deletion policy#Speedy deletion:

• Articles older than 24 hours that are nothing more than an empty skeleton. Use common sense when evaluating whether an article is "empty", and whether sufficient time has passed. If an article has some descriptive text, at least one valid listing, or has been added to the WV:Geographical hierarchy, then in most cases it should not be deleted.

I realize this proposal is a break from past tradition, but I don't think it's asking too much to require at least a couple of sentences of content for new articles. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:48, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Last night? It was in the early afternoon, around 1 PM! :)

Jokes aside, I followed the anonymous users doings in real time, notified him/her twice on their talk page to at the very least change that "Region name" part but apparently the user hasn't read it. Plus, if you look at the content of the articles, the user has added a hotel (usually a "GV Hotel") to most of them. It's possible that the user is a hotel tout. ϒpsilon (talk) 20:03, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

I think we need to look at the 'no deletion of articles of real places' with some notability criteria. According to Wikipedia there are 900,000 villiages in China. Is it valid for me to create 900,000 skeleton articles? (after all, each is a real place). I believe it is valid to delete such empty articles where the creator has been contacted and have not responded. Andrewssi2 (talk) 20:51, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

In general I think we want redirects created for real places that wouldn't qualify for their own articles, since that both prevents someone from creating an unnecessary article in the future, and also aids people who might want to read or add information about one of those 900,000 tiny villages. My concern in proposing that empty skeletons be allowed to be speedy deleted is that these articles show up as valid links and in search results, and thus cause confusion and frustration for readers/editors, and they also require unnecessary work for regular editors to track down geographic and other information to populate something that might not even be article-worthy. In both cases, I think having no article is better than having an empty template that provides absolutely no useful information about a destination. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:02, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Certainly, there is precedent for deleting page creation vandalism, which has varied from fictional villages to real specks on the map too tiny to meet can you sleep there?. This pattern of redirecting improbable titles is intended to keep real places out of the deletion discussion page if the destination is valid but too small to stand on its own. It's not an invitation to go on a w:user:Rambot spree and create every point listed in a national census. K7L (talk) 22:12, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

I would say that 'can you sleep there?' is also too broad. We should emphasise that (for example) a region that holds 5 small towns with almost no content in each is better represented by one article covering all five. This would help both overall article quality as well as better serving those individual places. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:24, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I think the redirect real places rule is a good one and cannot see that empty skeleton articles in general are an exception that warrants deletion. See Wikivoyage talk:Search Expedition#Index articles for discussion of why we want more internal links.

Specks on the map may not have any reason for tourism but they do get visitors. For example, as a kid I visited Kelwood, Manitoba (pop. < 500, no WP or WV article) because my grandparents were there. Also, it is moderately common for overseas Chinese, descendants of various European immigrants to the New World and others to want a look at the ancestral home, and that may well be some obscure village. They are moderately likely to search for the village name, in which case a redirect will be helpful. Pashley (talk) 02:36, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

With regards to your point about internal links, I'm only suggesting we allow for deletion of articles where the creator did little more than click on a template link, in which case the only internal link is to Region name or (at best) the parent region. Search engines will actually punish us for articles that are empty since we'll be considered to have worthless content. I fully agree that we should redirect real places, but with these empty skeletons the reality is that we don't have enough information to figure out if it should be a redirect, so current practice leads us to tag it with a best guess for "isPartOf" and hope that someone else will deal with it later; I don't think that's a good thing from a user or editor standpoint. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:43, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

We agree that such articles are not worth keeping so expanding them, e.g. by guessing IsPartOf, is silly. I just think that instead of deleting it will usually be better to redirect to the (possibly guessed) region. Pashley (talk) 03:22, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

The user is creating more articles right now. ϒpsilon (talk) 12:17, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I deleted some today created by this IP user but sure, redirections seems fair. However, it today's case many articles were containing same hotel listing as YPSI pointed out so they were potentially advertisement. --Saqib (talk) 12:38, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it is because all the bad articles have been deleted, but when I look at this user's contributions I do not see a problem. Some are expansions of skeletal articles, such as San Carlos (Negros Occidental) which I created as a stub last week, or Sipalay which has been present but stub-ish for years. Others add things to major cities like Cagayan de Oro.

Sure there are some grammar problems but basically everything I see is constructive. I'd say we should give him or her a break. Pashley (talk) 14:37, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Just a look at the history, I really do not see the value in creating stubs of all towns in the Philippines. Danao City is a good example. This article can be a redirect to Cebu if it isn't going to change.

I'd also say that if a user is just creating multiple skeleton articles without the intention to actually ever work on them again then it is behavior we should seek to correct. Andrewssi2 (talk) 21:39, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I feel like I'm missing something. None of the articles in this user's contribution history would fall under Ryan's proposed deletion criterion. Powers ^(talk) 01:24, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Regardless of Ryan's exact proposal, the articles are not valid under existing criteria.

Danao City has one hotel listing and nothing else. " Sleeping isn't all that travellers do, though, and there should be some content to fill out our other standard article sections: content regarding what and where to eat, how to have some fun in the evening, stuff to do, things to see, etc. If you know there really is no place to find food, nothing to do, and nothing to see at a location, it's likely that the article won't meet the criteria established in this policy. "

--Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:37, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

LtPowers - most of the articles I was concerned about were deleted earlier today (Special:Log/delete), but the criteria I've laid would still be valid additions to the deletion policy. If an article is nothing more than an empty skeleton after 24 hours I think it should be a speedy deletion candidate rather than something that should either sit around or that others need to research and potentially redirect. To Pashley's point, ideally if the place isn't article-worthy then it should be redirected, but that requires some research, and if that hasn't happened after 24 hours I think a delete of the empty article should be acceptable. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:08, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I also feel like I am missing something. As Andrew says, Danao is a good example. It has a WP article which says population is 120,000; this is not just a speck on the map, an article that might be deleted because the place is utterly insignificant. A redirect to Cebu City does not make sense since Danao is 40 km away and the Cebu article covers only the city proper, not even huge suburbs like Mandaue and Lapu Lapu.

At some point, we should probably create a huge city article for Metro Cebu including Cebu City, Mandaue, Lapu Lapu and other areas. Danao would be part of that, either as a separate district or as a redirect to one of the districts we then decide on. Until then, I'd say it is just fine as a separate article. Pashley (talk) 01:59, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd also say, contrary to Andrew's comment above, it is an obvious keep under existing criteria. Does anyone actually believe that If you know there really is no place to find food, nothing to do, and nothing to see at a location could possibly apply to a city of 120,000? Certainly a town that size would have some restaurants and at least one decent hotel for the business visitors, Since we are talking about the Philippines, I'd bet there's a fine church, some bars and karaoke joints, ... Granted, I've no idea where any of that is but that is completely different from If you know there really is no .. Pashley (talk) 02:20, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Looking at the deletion log, I'd say some of those were also worth keeping. w:Catarman, Northern Samar, for example, says the place is a provincial capital with population around 85,000. Pashley (talk) 02:48, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Pashley, I don't think my original point was clear. If the original author does not make any effort to create anything more than an empty skeleton, it should not be the responsibility of others to go to Wikipedia (or elsewhere) and do enough research to figure out what to do with that empty skeleton. You make a valid point that some of these empty articles might have been article-worthy, but my point is that we should not be forcing other editors to do that research if the original contributor did nothing more than create an empty article. If someone wants to research empty articles and figure out what to do with them then they should do so, but I am proposing that a speedy delete after 24 hours should also be a valid outcome. I don't think it is unreasonable to require a bare minimum of content in order for new articles to be kept, and if that threshold is not met we should be able to quickly deal with the situation, whereas the current status quo is that we either require someone else to do work or else keep a worthless (and confusing) skeleton in our site. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:59, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Pashley , although I agree that a city of 120,000 'should in theory' have sufficient content for an article the plain and simple fact is that the author didn't bother to add any (from his/her personal knowledge or research). (and as Ryan rightfully says it isn't the job of other people to build your article if you don't have the inclination yourself). Therefore under existing guidelines it meets deletion criteria. Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:12, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Andrewssi2 - when you say "Therefore under existing guidelines it meets deletion criteria", by my reading of Wikivoyage:Deletion policy#Speedy deletion empty skeletons do not currently qualify for speedy deletion, and deletion of such articles would be contradicted by the existing guideline that "Article entries should not be deleted from the site when a legitimate article can be written for the subject", which is why I'm proposing that the speedy deletion criteria be updated with the additional bullet point in the first comment of this thread. If I've overlooked something in current policy that would justify speedy deletion of such articles please point it out, in which case I withdraw my original proposal. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:24, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I think there is some ambiguity in policy wording that can (obviously) be taken in different ways. My reading was that if an article has a sleep listing, then that is still not sufficient unless there is something else substantive to do.

I'm happy for that point to be rewritten to fit in a consistent manner as to 'what is an article? ' . I do agree with your proposal for 'speedy delete' criteria as well. Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:45, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Good points, all. However, policy has always been that real places should be redirected rather than deleted so I do not want to delete without checking if the place is real. I'll copy the name into a Google search box or check on WP. Three outcomes are possible:

• • Not found; it is fictitious or too tiny to have a web presence. OK, delete it.
  • WP shows it as a decent-sized town, potentially an article here. Add a WP link and geo data if they aren't already there, then leave it.
  • Speck on the map. Redirect to region or nearby town.

That is, I'd keep or redirect most of the places under discussion. I do not think Ryan's proposal is a good idea, mainly because I think the new user who created Catarman (pop. 85,000, provincial capital, mentioned in half a dozen other WV articles) will be at least puzzled, quite likely angry, at finding it deleted. We need to encourage new contributors.

I could support the proposal if t were amended to require checking WP to see if the place is actually substantial. Pashley (talk) 04:55, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I think we meant 'substantial' from the aspect of how much content the author was willing to contribute, not how much content there was to potentially add.

I am thinking about a 'tumbleweed' badge for articles such as this. If no content is added to a skeleton article after 2 weeks, then it is valid to merge to the parent region and place a REDIRECT. Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:04, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

If there's no content, there's nothing to merge. K7L (talk) 06:15, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Indeed --Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:20, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

A redirect isn't the right solution in many cases, and creating one for a city that should have its own article is going to be just as confusing for future readers and editors as keeping an empty skeleton. The reason I proposed a delete is that it takes effort to figure out whether a skeleton should be expanded and kept as a separate article, redirected elsewhere, or handled in some other manner, and if the original author was unwilling to expend any effort on the article then others shouldn't have to do the work to figure out what to do with the empty template. However, since that doesn't appear to be a broadly shared opinion, the status quo is that every empty skeleton that isn't vandalism or touting should be kept, unless some alternate solution would be acceptable. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:45, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Late to the discussions, but I'm with Pashley and the status quo here. I don't mind doing this initial work to validate and find geo/IsPartOf/WP for new articles — it's something I do quite often. And as I do it I am sometimes inspired to add an image or two or some bits of info I gleaned from looking at the WP article or whatever. So I think that if people just start deleting them outright, we really would be losing a bit of incentive to article improvement, for virtually no gain. Texugo (talk) 11:21, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

I, too, am uncertain how the fact that a few skeleton articles were created by an anonymous IP editor led us to the conclusion that a policy that's worked perfectly well for us for years is no longer sufficient. I'll be more than agreeable to a discussion like this when we have an actual problem that needs solving, but as of now it strikes me as much ado about nothing. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:05, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

I have re-created Catarman, commented on its talk page. Pashley (talk) 06:18, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I also created Metro Cebu, set a number of breadcrumbs to point to it, put a link to Danao there. Pashley (talk) 08:45, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Redirect is a good solution if we are talking about a small hamlet near a larger town or combined into a rural location. However I think delete is a better solution for locations that could be usable article but currently have no content or just a one line introduction. In this case the article should be deleted and a red link with a short description added to the region article. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:11, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

So, a place that should have an article, you want to delete said article if there's not enough content yet? Powers ^(talk) 22:16, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I am in agreeance with Ryan above and also AndreCarrotflower. All along I have been feeling Andre's "much ado about nothing" sentiment. We've been having this discussion in a few different places now over a period of time without any real content produced as evidence that the problem is real. But if this is going to be pursued anyway, then I agree with Ryan and Traveler100 that if we cannot or don't want to get the article out of skeleton form, deletion should be done over redirecting. I don't like repeating, but again; redirects kill most potential articles rather than inspiring content to be placed in the redirected article. And our users are not well-equipped to redirect places they don't know well. This very discussion proves that with all the talk about Danao City. It was initially brought up as an obvious candidate for a redirect with Cebu as the obvious redirect. With so much being "obvious", we can assume that if we had gone the redirect route, it would be a Cebu redirect. Now we have others chiming in that it should have it's own article and that Cebu would not even be an appropriate redirect if it were redirected. But if the initial redirect were created as it was "so obvious", the discussion would not exist and the article would have been killed and made a redirect to an article that doesn't mention or cover it. I hope I'm not offending anyone when I say that I feel this is how most articles would end up. I don't have faith in our ability to redirect and that is regardless of the size of the city, but smaller places are certainly at greater risk. This proposal is about ARTICLE CONTENT and SITE AESTHETICS (and possibly also Google ranking?) none of which have anything to do with the destinations themselves, so there is no justification for creating redirects to penalize articles created without content. If the admin that finds it has no intention to make it a real article, it should be deleted to give it a chance for recreation at a later date without prejudice regarding whether it is real/not real or deserves or does not deserve an article. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:12, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Is it really so clear that redirects kill new articles? I can recall a number of instances in which users (often new users) turned redirects into regular articles. Also, it certainly is possible to have a talk page for a redirect. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:29, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Redirects are certainly not conducive to content-creation and at least have the potential to send the message "we don't want/need information about this place" as it indicates that someone at some point thought about the location and decided it was not worth an article. Even if they are neutral, I still have strong opposition as I have very low confidence in our ability to create sensible redirects about places we don't actually know about and still feel it is completely illogical to create redirects based on the incompleteness of the article (and yes, I understand it's about "empty skeletons" but that is still a level of completeness; the bottom one). ChubbyWimbus (talk) 13:50, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't think a redirect sends any particular message, except that we don't currently have an article about that place. And if we redirect based on areas being contained within larger areas (e.g., Alger < Arenac County < Northeastern Michigan < Northern MI < Lower Peninsula < Michigan < USA), anyone with access to Google Maps and Wikipedia should be able to find the right container. Peter Chastain (talk) 15:00, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

No, redlinks or complete lack of presence show that we don't currently have an article. Although we may disagree on what the message is, redirects certainly send a different message than simply not having an article. The idea that Google can solve all of our problems was proven false in this very discussion as I pointed out with Danao City and that's a large city. With smaller towns and in many non-English-speaking and non-Western countries Google is also still lacking. What this discussion really comes down to is

• if people feel so strongly that what is currently a phantom "issue" (skeleton articles) warrants action, and we don't want that action to render the site unusable, we MUST change the "real places should always be redirected, never deleted" clause to allow for deletion of skeleton articles.
• If we do NOT permit that, then this discussion should be killed. "Skeletons are ugly, bad for Google rankings, and bad for usability" are not valid or even logical reasons to redirect articles. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 15:42, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Checking back a year and a half after the discussion petered out, I find the examples above — Danao City, Sipalay, San Carlos (Negros Occidental) and Catarman — have all been expanded; certainly none of them are great articles, but they are now all better than nothing. Pashley (talk) 02:16, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I suggested a Metro Cebu article in the 2016 discussion of Danao & later created it. By 2020 that article was good enough to be a destination of the month. Pashley (talk) 01:38, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Delete vs redirect

Our current policy is to redirect real places that fail Wiaa. That doesn't work well when there is no obvious redirect target, e.g., [[wv:Vfd#Alger (Michigan)|Alger, MI], a village which is in a large region with many such villages and no nearby potential WV destinations. Anyone can use Google Maps to figure out where the village is, and it is a disservice to redirect users to a target that does not mention the place being redirected. That mention could be a section or even a {{Listing}} in a list of places that are in or near the target place. The question of whether it is appropriate to merge content into any particular target should be decided on and individual basis. Accordingly, I would like to propose change to our policy:

Proposal: Remove the rule of thumb, if it is a real place, redirect rather than delete, and replace it with If a place or topic is mentioned in another Wikivoyage article, redirect father than delete.

Peter Chastain (talk) 08:22, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I find your proposal too restrictive. I'd change it to If a place or topic is or justifiably could be mentioned in another Wikivoyage article, redirect rather than delete. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:05, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

As a user, I hate getting redirected to an article that doesn't mention the topic I was looking for. If during the 14-day deletion discussion, we reach a consensus that it is appropriate to add content to the redirection target, I would not object to extending the discussion until someone can actually put the content there. I just don't want that step to fall through the cracks. Peter Chastain (talk) 09:36, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Can you use an example? If Village A has 10 houses and nothing else, and is redirected to Town B, should Town B absolutely have to make reference to Village A within its article text? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 09:41, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Really feel empty articles just demotivates readers and reduces the quality of the site. Redirect are also annoying if the destination does not mention the location name that was entered. If a page has no content past the name and its location in the world, delete it! If the location deserves to be an article then make it a red link on the region page with maybe one line sentence next to it (ready for someone to add content later). If the page has useful listing(s) but no sleep entry, depends a little on the location. For example a good restaurant recommendation or particular attraction on a page then the listing information should be somewhere. If it is a small settlement near another town which has a page (or the settlement's administrative town has a page) then move listing there, and redirect. In this case add the settlement name to understand section as well as the listing's address. If nothing in the area but the listing is useful/interesting then keep the article. --Traveler100 (talk) 10:46, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Responding to Andrewssi2's request for an example: Wood Colony, an Old German Baptist Brethren settlement in Stanislaus County, was featured on NPR's The California Report last year, in a story about its so-far-successful attempt to avoid being annexed by adjacent Modesto. I would want someone who is interested in visiting the place to be taken to our Modesto article, but only if that article mentioned it, perhaps in a "nearby communities" section that could also include Salida and Empire. On the other hand, Alger (Michigan) isn't really close to anything bigger and could only be redirected to Northeastern Michigan—if we are willing to add it and hundreds of other such places to that article. Peter Chastain (talk) 12:18, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

(indent) In most instances where a "nearby town" or region is the target of a redirect, there is no mention. I don't expect this to change, so I don't like the idea and regions are not proper redirects for towns/cities. I'm not really on board with this "empty articles are killing WV" idea, but I will repeat that I don't trust our members to properly redirect places they are not personally familiar with and feel that those redirects would be more of a mess than leaving the articles alone or deleting them. Site aesthetics should not be our top priority, especially at the expense of usability and contributions/growth. What is "demotivating" to readers is more motivating to contributors, especially compared to a redirect but they're also more motivating than red spaces. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:26, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I think we should all take into account that there are a huge number of populated places on this earth. And in the grand scheme of things probably only a minority of them are worthy of even a mention in Wikivoyage. Yes we are not paper, but we should take a hint from the legacy guides who don't mention every single place even in their non-paper coverage. That does not mean by any means that we should only cover Paris, Rome and New York City, but there are places that do not under any circumstances deserve even a redirect and our policy should reflect that. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:08, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

The policy already states that we don't want articles about places with nothing to do or articles about every named location on the planet. What more is there to reflect? We cannot create a policy that will prevent mistakes, experimentation, etc. and newcomers (who are most likely to create suspect articles) won't know our policies anyway. We can only try and make people aware and work with new users to help them find their way. And once again, empty articles are just empty articles; it doesn't mean there is nothing to say. It just means it hasn't yet been said. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:01, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Well the way I see it once an article on some three houses in the Prairie or some trailer park in Arkansas is created it cannot be deleted because an interpretation of current policy that says "never delete real places" is rather prevalent. To make it cristal clear: I support a change in policy to make small size and lack of anything travel related of interest grounds for deletion. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:35, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

There has been some recent discussion around our hierarchy and the true purpose of Region articles. If Region X has 25 near empty village articles underneath it then it really makes it harder for the traveler to use that article effectively. An additional sub-region does not help the reader to navigate the relevant content any better. Perhaps the question is not should we delete or redirect these articles, but rather employ a more effective strategy of merging multiple related settlements into a one article. The reader then gets specific article on Village Y if they were specifically looking for it, and another reader discovers that same content through more natural discovery. Andrewssi2 (talk) 20:29, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Well there have been some attempts even at a policy page about rural areas. I fear part of the problem is that our userbase skews urban.... Which is probably only natural as most people who travel much don't live in rural areas and vice versa. Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:34, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I think the solution is relatively straightforward. Villages and settlements around the world generally are not isolated but fall into districts (or some other name such as 'Parish' or whatever). If we stop being so precious about vaguely worded and selective pieces of policy and look at the big picture as what makes a genuinely useful travel guide, then I would hope this approach would make sense to all. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:40, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Redirects specifically

Adding a new sub-heading since the above discussion is covering a few different topics...

The following proposal expands the scope of what Peter proposed above in an attempt to address the fact that the "rule of thumb" about redirecting real places seems to be interpreted differently by different people, and that we currently don't have specific guidance about redirects for non-geographic subjects. As others have noted, a bad redirect can be confusing, while a good redirect greatly increases site usability. Given those two realities, what about using portions of Wikipedia's guidance on redirects, replacing the "rule of thumb" paragraph in Wikivoyage:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting with something like the following:

A redirect is inappropriate when:

1. The redirect might cause confusion. Example: redirecting "Cherry Blossom" to Japan's Top 100 Cherry Blossom Spots would cause confusion with all other sites that are known for cherry blossoms.
2. The redirect might interfere with searches. Example: if "Ocean" redirected to Ocean City it would prevent results from being returned when searching for the term "ocean".
3. The redirect could be considered self-promotion or spam (see also WV:Don't tout). Individual restaurants, bars, hotels or other businesses should not get redirects, although exceptions are made for large and/or important businesses and services like Amtrak (see #3 in the following section).

A redirect is appropriate when:

1. The redirect is an alternate name or spelling for a place, including common misspellings.
2. The redirect is for a real place and there is an appropriate redirect target. This guidance applies to neighborhoods, tiny towns, or places that may not meet the WV:WIAA criteria. Example: a redirect has been created for Hell's Kitchen, which is a neighborhood within Manhattan.
3. The redirect is a term for which links are commonly created, or is a subject that might otherwise be likely to result in creation of an article that does not meet WV:WIAA. Example: Taj Mahal redirects to Agra.
4. The redirect aids searches on certain terms. Example: USA redirects to United States of America.
5. Deletion would risk breaking external links to Wikivoyage. This guidance is most relevant for redirects/articles that have existed for a significant length of time.
6. Deletion would result in loss of edit history required for attribution purposes. This guidance usually only applies to redirects created as a result of merging two articles.

The above text would be less likely to be interpreted differently by different people, and while it still leaves plenty of gray area when making decisions about keeping/deleting redirects, it would hopefully make those discussions more productive by encouraging arguments based on the utility of a redirect, its likelihood to cause confusion, etc. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:42, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

This is all good, but there still exists the ambiguity and likely controversy over what an "appropriate redirect target" is. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:53, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

For a place, I would redirect to the smallest entity that contains it, e.g., redirect Alger (MI) to Arenac County. Do you think we should also consider redirecting small entities to an adjacent entity at the same level, e.g., a town to a nearby city? Peter Chastain (talk) 15:20, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

That totally depends on how much content an article about the small entity could reasonably have, if it were complete. The degree to which the town and city in question have separate identities should be relevant, too. For example, it doesn't matter how small a suburb of New York City is: It still shouldn't be directed to New York City, because New York has a clearly separate identity from any suburb. This is much less true of Washington, D.C., to take one other example. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:40, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

The example I had in mind was Salida (California) and Modesto (notwithstanding that Salida does have places to sleep and is thus an article). But I would be happier if we could stick to the simple rule that a place gets redirected to something that contains it. Peter Chastain (talk) 15:56, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I like what Ryan has proposed and am no longer as opposed to redirecting a place to a target that doesn't mention the place, if the target is a small enough containing entity; e.g., don't redirect Taj Mahal to India or Alger (MI) to Northeastern Michigan. We should be willing to create articles (if only an outline) for small governmental entities like a US county, as needed, and to relax our "sleep" test in the unlikely event that a county has no place to sleep. Peter Chastain (talk) 15:56, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Redirecting to places that contain them has been discussed before as a bad idea. We ask users NOT to add specific content to region articles, so the redirect would effectively kill the "add content until it's too big for the article" process and is in direct opposition to the traveler comes first philosophy by purposefully creating redirects that we know are not helpful. It's offensive to the traveler who expects travel information to give them a geography lesson. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:12, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I think most counties of the US should not have their own article. And most places on earth should not even have a redirect. Yes, I do think size and lack of anything of touristic interest should be valid grounds for deletion as opposed to redirection. Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:47, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

My initial reaction is similar to Ikan Kekek’s. I think some of the controversy comes about because we don’t agree on an “appropriate redirect target”. The proposed guidelines also don’t explicitly state what happens when the article is a real place without an appropriate redirect target. I can infer that it can be deleted, but I’m not 100% sure because that situation isn’t listed as case where a redirect is inappropriate.

Using Alger (Michigan) as a test case, I’d argue that it can be deleted using Ryan’s guidelines above. I think we more or less determined it doesn’t meet our article criteria, the original author hasn’t done anything further with it, and my own view is there are no suitable existing redirect targets… ergo, delete. Do others agree with this? -Shaundd (talk) 23:58, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

There are (at least) two separate discussions ongoing - one about clarifying our policies with respect to redirects, and a second about how to handle empty articles for places that might not meet WV:WIAA. The proposal above is meant only to clarify the policy on redirects (the first case). While empty articles about places that don't meet the article-worthiness criteria may sometimes be solved with a redirect, this proposal is only relevant to that case insofar as it helps to clarify policy about using redirects; the larger issue of what to do with these articles would be better handled as a separate discussion. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:53, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree that what happens to Algar should be a separate discussion. I realized belatedly that my comment was too open ended. That said, I think the two discussions are related as what is said in the Redirect policy can influence how to deal with small places that don't meet our article criteria (I.e. Are there any instances where a real world place cannot be redirected and thus deleted). I support your proposed guidelines as I think they're an improvement but I feel we'll need to revisit the issue again in the future. -Shaundd (talk) 16:53, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

(indent) The issue of when redirects are appropriate vs deletion and guidelines for redirecting is already being revisited and discussed just above this one, so please add comments now so that we can work towards a solution and move on. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:38, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Apparently there is disagreement as to what to do with airlines and companies generally

My stance is that Wikivoyage does not and should not have articles on companies. We are ill equipped to say something about e.g. the business practices of Ryanair as we do not have footnotes and should not start them. However, apparently some people think we should redirect American Airlines even though such a redirect does not exist for Delta Airlines. I say we should have a policy of "we don't have articles on companies - unless there is a compelling reason to redirect their names to a travel topic mentioning them". Furthermore the redirect in question points to the wrong page anyway. That being said, how do you think we should clarify our deletion policy lest we get a barrage of redirects for every COPA airlines and Augsburg Airways in existence? Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:40, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

VFD

Swept in from the pub

I think Ambrose may be eligible for VFD as it has a population of only 23, but thought I would post this here first to see if this means it qualifies. Thanks, Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 09:43, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

That's a red link. Was the article already deleted? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:56, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

The population is generally not the deciding factor. If there is something to come for and somewhere to stay, be it a spot where you can put your tent, then it might qualify for an article (but unless there is something more, it should mostly be handled in the article of a nearby bigger settlement). A real town usually have some sights and service, but it is because of them, not because of the population, the town should get its article. --LPfi (talk) 21:58, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Though imho, high population makes a compelling case of there being a "travel market" for that place. Wolfsburg for instance may be bland as hell and lack any type of discernible history not tied to cars, but the mere fact of its size (just a tad over 120 000 people) makes for people visiting it. And of course if you do care for cars, there are sights in this place - almost all of them of course related to cars. If you on the other hand have a place like Pottenstein of scarcely 5000 people (less if you don't count the various hamlets that were annexed to it) you cannot just "assume" it to be a travel destination on account of its size. It does have things that make people go there (caves, a whatever this is called in English, a swimming pool drawing people from the region and nature), but its mere size would not give you an indication of that. Having grown up in a place of scarcely 5000 people, I can tell you that the vast majority of them do not merit an article in WV. Most of them are not even worth a throwaway line like "in the vicinity the places A B C and D mostly serve as bedroom communities nobody who does not live there cares about". But above a certain "critical size" (the exact number of which is of course debatable) a place becomes worthy of mention in travel coverage (especially if aimed at business as well as leisure travel) just on account of the number of people (and businesses and businesses catering to businesses and costumers and...) there are. No matter how bland or unappealing it may be. And just to dispel any rumors, yes I have been to Wolfsburg and I did quite enjoy my time there, though I would still advise anybody who does not care for cars and has no ties to the region to rather go to Braunschweig or Hannover or even Quedlinburg and make the one non-car thing in Wolfsburg (the phaeno) an - admittedly very rewarding - day trip. And of course to come back to the main issue, even a ghost town with no population, including ones that are next to impossible destinations may be worthy of coverage, but the case can logically not be made on account of their size or number of inhabitants. Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:26, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Policy has always been don't delete real places & I think that is a good policy, one we should definitely retain. Taking your example, Pottenstein does not seem to rate an article, but having a redirect is better than not. A German might look for the caves, an American for the place granddad immigrated from, ...

For related discussion, see Wikivoyage_talk:Deletion_policy#Completely_empty_skeletons. Pashley (talk) 02:54, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Almost, but not quite that simple. The don't delete real places was intended as a way to circumvent VfD by redirecting instead of deleting, but there are at least two exceptions:

1. The deletion of page creation vandalism, usually a long string of population-1 specks on a map that could never meet Wikivoyage:What is an article? and are improbable as travel destinations because there's simply nothing there.
2. The deletion of basically-empty skeleton articles imported from some other wiki, where keeping the skeletons would require keeping attribution to a rival, external project. (This inherently would only arise once on any given page, presumably without prejudice to creation of real articles for these destinations in future.) K7L (talk) 20:20, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Père Lachaise Cemetery and Baden-Powell grave

Both the below-referenced articles were redirects to existing articles per Wikivoyage:Deletion policy#Redirects:

• Père Lachaise Cemetery to Paris/20th arrondissement
• Baden-Powell grave to Nyeri#See

Both redirects were listed in wikidata and if someone on wikipedia reads an article, and sees a link for wikivoyage in the external links, this will increase the number of visitors to wikivoyage. The redirect causes no harm and sends people to the corresponding article. Check out [2]. Please restore both. Evrik (talk) 14:59, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

On a point of policy "Redirection pages provide alternative page titles for articles". A Point of interest listing is not an article. "The redirect is an alternate name or spelling for a place, including common misspellings." I interpreted this as Wikivoyage definition of a place, but willing to hear alternative arguments. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:53, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

"using the redirect as a sitelink .... from two item pages, which is not allowed" wikidata:Help:Sitelinks#Linking to Wikimedia site pages --Traveler100 (talk) 13:17, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I think this is an interesting point and worth discussing as a general principle. Basically what this is proposing is listing on Wikivoyage (attractions, buildings, parks, cemeteries, rail stations, airports, historic hotels and notable restaurants) that have an article on Wikipedia could have a link from Wikipedia to a redirect page on Wikivoyage. I can see the advantage that it could bring more visitors to this site from the more popular Wikipedia site and give this site some needed attention. Now although it has been said, redirects are cheap, they are not free, there is a cost involved. The main cost I see is that the auto-suggests in the search field could get out of hand. Wikivoyage articles are destinations (settlements) or travel topics not attractions (points of interest). If I start to type "Baden" into the search field I expect to see suggestions of German spar towns. If I was looking for a specific POI I would type it in the search field and press enter to see the search results (works fine for Père Lachaise Cemetery). The other cost I see is that checking redirects for syntax/content problems (such as embedded tags and categories) will be a much greater task. Currently there are just under 20,000 redirects on Wikivoyage, this will increase, I would guess ten fold, if we start matching to listings with Wikipedia pages. Not saying we should not do this but I think it needs more discussion on advantages and disadvantages before we start down this road. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:49, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Note: As this is turning into a policy discussion I've moved it from votes for undeletion since that space is not meant to debate policy. I've also restored the redirects in question since they do not seem to be speedy deletion candidates, but that should in no way prevent anyone from nominating them for the normal VFD process or continuing this discussion.

As a matter of policy, the last time the issue of redirects came up we had a discussion at #Delete vs redirect that led to the current Wikivoyage:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting section in the deletion policy. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:04, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

To improve the utility of wikivoyage, more links like what's at w:Père Lachaise Cemetery#External links would send people to the corresponding page at this site. Evrik (talk) 16:33, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

More links from Wikipedia articles are most certainly welcome. Editors can also find it useful to be able to link to attractions directly (cp. Eiffel Tower).

However I do understand Traveler100's concerns about hundreds of things, none of which is a destination, appearing in the auto-suggest menu. Maybe it's possible to tweak the auto-suggest function so that actual articles (article names) are always given preference over redirects? ϒpsilon (talk) 17:41, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Auto-suggest isn't the only issue (and I fear depreferencing redirects could backfire from a usability perspective). There's also the question of what to do with homonymic attractions located in different cities; if we have disambiguated redirects for each of them, then that suggests we ought to have a disambiguation page to distinguish between them. And on top of that, there's the semantic problem: We don't actually have a travel guide to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery; we have a listing for it. Powers ^(talk) 19:25, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

So how did you create the link from Wikidata? When I attempt to reference a Wikivoyage redirect page the Wikidata checks the final page and states it already has a wikidata entry. Try creating on Wikidata Q4168 a connection to the page "Loreley" here. I assume you created the link from Wikidata to a page with just text, then added redirect after the wikidata link to Wikivoyage was created? --Traveler100 (talk) 07:59, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

We already have a policy that notable attraction names should have redirects if travellers may want to visit them but may not know where they are. Examples include Taj Mahal, Alhambra & Eiffel Tower. I'd say Baden-Powell & other graves like Jim Morrison clearly qualify; redirects are not really necessary, but they are somewhat useful since people do visit these.

So the only open question is whether the cemetery does. I do not know. Pashley (talk) 14:32, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

So can we change the Wikidata block on creating site links to redirect pages on Wikivoyage? --Traveler100 (talk) 14:59, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I would guess that is highly, highly unlikely. Powers ^(talk) 01:21, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Airline redirects

Discussion moved to Talk:Airlines.

Deleting or redirecting

The policy is confusing regarding deleting versus redirecting. There is an important distinction between redirecting and keeping history on one hand and deleting (and possibly creating a redirect afterwards) on the other. I was going to plunge forward, but noticed two categories where I am not sure about the practice: the points "too fine-grained" (attractions etc.) and "do not meet our article threshold" (in other cases? or including attractions?). One should probably clarify the difference between these – and tell in what cases we want a redirect. I suppose we want to have one for Buckingham Palace, but probably not for a Mac Donalds, Kauppatori. In cases where substantial text was merged into the proper article, one should note that the redirect must be kept to preserve attribution. Do we keep redirect for most attractions? --LPfi (talk) 07:01, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

If it's a real place that people are likely to search for (as opposed to an average retail establishment) then it's okay to keep a redirect (and that's preferred to starting a deletion discussion). If it's a place that had significant content moved to another article, then we have to keep a redirect. Powers ^(talk) 01:16, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Certainly redirects are appropriate where an attraction name is extremely well-known: Buckingham Palace, Taj Mahal, Alhambra, Smithsonian, etc. Users might well search for the name & might not know what city or what district it is in. Lesser attractions should not get redirects, though, except in rare cases where it is needed for attribution. Pashley (talk) 21:53, 24 August 2017 (UTC)