Wikivoyage talk:Help

This page is for discussing how to improve the Project:Help page. If you're lost or confused about something regarding Wikivoyage in general, try asking your question in the Travellers' pub.

Listing of the basics

Can somebody who knows basic wiki markup write a brief listing of the basics that we need? I've forgotten how to do half the things I used to know by heart and I keep messing up my formatting when I try to do anything more complicated than bullets :(

Could we please have explanations of the following markup:

• headers and how to make them bigger
• bold/italic etc
• lists
  • 'stepped' lists
  • numbered lists
• links to other articles
  • links with different text to the actual link
  • external links
• how to insert an image
• how to 'wrap' the text around the image

(WT-en) KJ 23:10, 6 Aug 2003 (PDT)

Hi. Evan started doing this at Project:Wiki markup. You can get there from Project:Help --> Project:How to edit a page and it's the first link in the first graph. Maybe we need to move this link up? Hope this helps (I'm a wiki newbie myself, so trying to learn as I go along).

A good page it is too... but I didn't see it at all because it was linked as 'wiki markup' - I thought it just went to a brief explanation or something. I know WHAT the markup is - I just forget how to use it. lol I'd suggest linking it directly to the help page - I know that's where I looked for it. Call the link 'How to use Wiki Markup in an article' to be totally obvious! (WT-en) KJ

.... OLD days....

.... Um, can I ask whether this is the old travel shop that I remember from ~ 1970 ? The agency I remember, as a kid, had a Hawaiian Tiki with a fountain in the window.... My father worked for Wardair on the 26th floor of the CN building nearby ... I, with my father, used to (if I have this right...) used to walk past your window often ... the image sticks in my mind ....I was about nine or nen at the time ... um, am I right .... ?

al graham jr.

Hi! Sorry, we're not the company you're thinking of. I know "Wiki" is a common word in Hawaii, but in our case it refers to the kind of software used to run the site (it was named after the wikiwiki buses from the Honolulu airport)... Hope you have a look around anyway! (WT-en) Majnoona 14:23, 10 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Some updates

I didn't want to mess with the help page directly, but it seems that it could use a bit of cleanup and a brief explanation as to what some of the guidelines are. I've got a proposed update at User:(WT-en) Wrh2/Help if anyone has any comments. The major changes are just removing a dead link, reorganizing some of the sections, and adding a description to most of the links. This also more closely follows the help outline used on Wikimedia, which may be better known to people. -- (WT-en) Wrh2 00:26, 18 May 2005 (EDT)

I went ahead and updated, but please revert the changes if I've overstepped my bounds. Hopefully the descriptions next to the links are useful, and I think having the article templates more readily available should be useful. -- (WT-en) Wrh2 00:02, 19 May 2005 (EDT)

I think an overhaul was a long time coming; thanks for getting it started. I've kind of re-organized some thing again; notably the headers. I also have some very particular ideas about lists; I think putting huge lists on a page is less than helpful. When we started Wikivoyage, I put "meta" information into 4 main sections:

1. Project description (about, goals, faq, etc.)
2. Help on the software (how to edit, how to undo, Wiki markup, recent changes, etc.)
3. Manual of style; how we format and organize the guides (spelling, bold, article templates, etc.)
4. Project policy; how we work together as people (admin policy, deletion policy, etc.)

Project:Help was the index for the second kind of page. I think it's still pretty good to keep it focussed on that, and refer to rather than include the other kinds of meta-page indexes. In particular, we also have Project:utilities, which lists all the meta pages. --(WT-en) Evan 07:25, 19 May 2005 (EDT)

Map coordinates

Exact or even approximate map coordinates should be submitted with each location/article. That way users could find these locations using their GPS, Google Earth or a similar mapping application. It would be best if standard 'tags' were used to identify coordinates in an article: e.g., geobloggers and flikr uses the geotagged key word with the following format for coordinates: "geo:lat=49.000", "geo:lon= -123.000"

Yes. I want to add Turtle to the system, and let people set Basic Geo (WGS84 lat/long) Vocabulary data, as well as others. Probably something that will be happening in the next couple of months. --(WT-en) Evan 21:27, 15 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Email address displayed

Please help! I'm new and for some reason my email address is displayed in the list of recent contributors at the bottom of one of the pages. I've removed my email address from my account but it is still there at the bottom of that page aaaaarrrrgh! How do I remove it? Thanks.

Hi, is it Catherine? I guessed from your IP that you were referring to New Zealand. The problem was that the page was cached with your email address set as your real name. I've cleared the cached version for you.

Meanwhile, welcome to Wikivoyage! -- (WT-en) Mark 06:37, 3 Nov 2005 (EST)

Thanks so much! Cheers, Catherine.

Help! I have the same problem at Necedah! I tried purging the cache from the edit page, but that doesn't help. Thanks in advance. (WT-en) Jeff Johnson 08:29, 6 January 2012 (EST)

Can you verify that you have filled out "Real Name" on your Special:Preferences page, and that the value isn't your email address? -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:26, 6 January 2012 (EST)

Thanks. That was it. Should have found that myself. (WT-en) Jeff Johnson 22:01, 6 January 2012 (EST)

getting help

I'm a new user, and I've put some things into the page for Antwerp. I would like to re-use an image that is used for the german page for Antwerp (de:Antwerpen) but I have no clue how to do this. In the german pages I could add it but it would be nice to add it to the english and french page. I further do not dare to copy images/maps from other sites due to copyrights. It would be nice to have a better explanation of it! --(WT-en) Twopeak

Right now, you have to download it and upload it again. At some point in the future we'll have a Wikivoyage commons to share images across the different language versions. --(WT-en) Evan 16:42, 3 Nov 2005 (EST)

ADDING A PICTURE FROM WIKI SHARED

HELP ! HOW DOES ONE ADD A PHOTO TO A WIKI PAGE? DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE. THE EXISTING HELP IS USELESS.

Check out the info on this page: Project:How to add an image. If this not sufficiently clear, then this info on the Talk page might help: Project:How to add an image#Image won't show. Remember, that you need to be logged in on shared to add images. (WT-en) WindHorse 23:50, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

Rugby World Cup 2007

Hi I'm new at I have just started the Rugby World Cup 2007 guide, similar to World Cup 2006. But it needs a lot of help, please make any changes that you think might help it. Thanks

Using Wikivoyage for travel

Copied from Project:8 April 2007:

So, one thing that the Slate article points out to me is that we don't have a good page on how to use Wikivoyage guides for travelling. Some things that seem rather obvious to experienced Wikivoyagers (look at the article status, check the districts in huge cities) aren't actually all that intuitive. Should we have a page on using Wikivoyage guides for travel? --(WT-en) Evan 10:55, 8 April 2007 (EDT)

I think a bigger issue is that it's hard to figure out where documentation is and how to use it. This isn't a job I'm volunteering for, but starting with Project:Help (which is the most obvious starting point for most people, and it's linked from the left nav) it might be good to categorize our documentation, using a tree structure to allow people to drill-down. Something like:

Project:Help (which would contain)

Help for readers/travelers

Overview of help for readers/travelers

List of reader/traveler articles

Help for contributors (that's you!)

Text overview of how to contribute

List of contributor articles

Help for others

Overview of help for others

Links to articles such as re-using travel guides, etc.

That's just a suggestion (documentation isn't my strong suit), but the current help documentation is somewhat fragmented and difficult to follow, so some consolidation and re-organization might go a long way towards improving usability. Additionally, although they've been a four-letter word around here for a while, use of Mediawiki categories for organizing documentation would also be useful in providing indexes for people looking for documentation about particular features. We would of course need to keep the categories limited and organized, but they could be useful. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:56, 8 April 2007 (EDT)

That's a great idea. Should we move the discussion to Project:Help? --(WT-en) Evan 20:04, 8 April 2007 (EDT)

Done. If we are going to begin using categories, having three that match the tree above might be a good start - perhaps "Category:Traveler help", "Category:Editor help", and I'm stuck for a name for "miscellaneous", but I would imagine that there must be a word that encompasses re-using travel guides and other non-editor or traveler help topics. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 02:16, 9 April 2007 (EDT)

I'll take a stab at reorganizing this page. It occurs to me that a good way to start would be with a section called "Understand".... See User:(WT-en) TVerBeek/Help for a work in progress. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 21:16, 15 May 2007 (EDT)

Lookin good – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 00:23, 16 May 2007 (EDT)

Here it is. I mostly just shuffled things around, with an outline inspired by ye olde article templates. I took the liberty of taking out the IRC and AIM links, since I never hear anyone refer to them and I suspect they're not reguarly "patrolled" these days. And I added a link to the previously suggested guide for actually using Wikivoyage, which I think is a good idea. I've pulled a fair number of items out of this page, and put them on stubby supporting pages; there were just too many links here, and especially too many TMI-newbie-overload links. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 23:14, 20 May 2007 (EDT)

Equivalent of wikipedia's reference desk

Archived from the Pub:

Is there currently an equivalent of a reference desk in wikivoyage? (WT-en) Andjam 01:13, 25 May 2006 (EDT)

Sort of: some destinations have docents, but in general feel free to post questions to talk pages and someone will try to answer! (WT-en) Majnoona 22:42, 27 May 2006 (EDT)

It might be cool to start it, though! I like the idea. Project:Information kiosk, maybe? Or just Project:?, like the road signs ? --(WT-en) Evan 10:48, 1 June 2006 (EDT)

Or how about Project:Concierge? Concierge means keeper of the keys and that's essentially what anyone volunteering for that job would be. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 04:50, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

This seems like an excellent idea, and I'm surprised discussion of it has flagged. May I rekindle? One question for Evan and/or other programmers: does the architecture support creation of "Concierge" as a user type similar to "Admin" without significant revision? If so, discussion of just what a Concierge can do, and how to help them do it, seems like the next step. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 13:59, 6 August 2006 (EDT)

Bump. Anyone interested in this idea? — (WT-en) Ravikiran 08:45, 16 February 2007 (EST)

Now created here: Wikivoyage:Tourist Office --Nick (talk) 18:53, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Some ideas

Archived from the Pub:

Im sick of always having to log into wikivoyage share, then log in here by copying and pasting the user page thig through open ID. How can I make it so i don't have to do that? I have Firefox, apparently it has password remembering, Could that help?

Also I find the help articles confusing as some really confusing thing (actually i find [www.uncycolpedia.com| uncyclopedia's]help articles less confusing. Would it be possible to format them in some sort of hierarchy? or a single page that you can print out so you know what code does what? I'm sufficing on finding a page I like and copy and pasting the bits I want, then changing the words. I cant seem to find useful information.

What is all this attribution share alike nonsense about. I cant be bothered reading that rubbish. I just want everyone to use my information for everything. What do I use for that?

Also when I upload images there is something telling me to add a tag, which I consequently don't understand and thus ignore. Your help section is so very confusing. Maybe collaboration of the month could be to fix it. Apart from being scattered to the four corners in random amounts the problem with help is that there is no entry level explanation. Maybe "beginner" Learning and advanced would help. Right now its like teaching someone words in Hebrew then expecting them to create a grammatically correct sentence, The knowledge gap can in some case on wikivoyage be just to large. Im nopt sure ill ever get the hang of it its so cronic.I can only contribute effectively if i know how

(WT-en) Mesipisian 05:02, 2 December 2006 (EST)

Ya know, I've also found the help files a bit hard to navigate around in. Perhaps there should be a Project:Documentation Expedition to help us organize efforts toward making it better. Of course any one of us can kick off the project.

Two cool things to put right up top and front would be:

1. Don't worry about doing it "right". Just go ahead and put content somewhere, others will fix it up.
2. The license is really important. Really.

Anyhow, I guess one of us is going to have to Project:Plunge forward and get the docs started. -- (WT-en) Mark 05:48, 2 December 2006 (EST)

Minimizing edit conflicts

Contributors should be strongly encouraged to edit at the lowest possible level to minimize conflicts. I've had many disruptive conflicts when someone else hit the edit tab at the top, gaining edit access to the entire article. Actually they were doing minor and very localized edits that could have been accomplished by clicking on 'edit' at the top of the one section they were working on and there would have been no conflict.

Can the basic design be modified to discourage unnecessary top-level edits? (WT-en) LADave 13:13, 7 June 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, it can take a lot of time to retype everything that is lost through this kind of action. However, if you first click on 'Show preview', then your edit won't be lost - just back up a page and do a copy and paste. By the way, apologies if it was me that caused you to lose your edit. I'll remember your request/advise in the future. Mea Culpa. (WT-en) WindHorse 13:25, 7 June 2007 (EDT)

Also, I think if a page gets changed at all, regardless of if you're just editing a section or the whole page, i will result in an edit conflict... – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:33, 8 June 2007 (EDT)

openid login doesn't work

can't login using openid. when i select a nickname after coming back from my identity provider page i get some weird search page. 70.116.26.73 00:21, 21 July 2008 (EDT)

forgot my password

Why can't I find any help about what to when I have forgotten my password? —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Liisa Mari (talk • contribs)

There's an "email password" button right on the login page – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 23:49, 7 September 2008 (EDT)

Column Template???....

Could Wikivoyage Admins please create a Column Template like the following if you have time??? I could have done it but don't have the login rego unfortunately

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Col-begin

The template is necessary as a lot of spaces in the page of Sunshine Coast (Queensland) has been lost —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 202.173.190.40 (talk • contribs)

No, we don't really use columns in the articles here, once some pictures and a map are added to that page, and short one-liner descriptions for the cities, it won't look so sparse :) – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 23:06, 21 January 2009 (EST)

Using Wikivoyage material in other publications

Could someone clear up the copyright situation with Wikivoyage. If I were to publish a book which contained excerpts from Wikivoyage - say, 5 out of 20 places had text from Wikivoyage - would that be legally wrong? Would it still be wrong if authors were attributed? Does a publication have to be free to legally use Wikivoyage text? - (WT-en) Minotaur 05:54, 8 February 2009 (EST)

See Project:How to re-use Wikivoyage guides. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:05, 8 February 2009 (EST)

That does not clearly answer my specific questions. - (WT-en) Minotaur 16:32, 8 February 2009 (EST)

There's nothing to be said that isn't covered in that article, but here goes nonetheless. You have to attribute authors, and you must somehow mark the excerpts as being licensed under the CC-by-SA 1.0 license. That's all. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:36, 8 February 2009 (EST)

Readers/Contributors

I'm going to have a bit of a go at restructuring help based on whether the user is a contributor, or just wants to be able to read and use the guides. Please feel free to discuss, or revert/discuss if there is anything objectionable. --(WT-en) inas 20:45, 2 May 2010 (EDT)