Wikivoyage talk:Listings/Archive 2014–2015

UK postal codes

"Do not include the ... postal code". In UK articles, partic London articles, postal codes seem to be used a lot instead of suburb names. Unlike some countries, where a postal code covers a large area, the UK ones are quite precise and seem to me to be quite useful in our listings. Should we make an explicit exception to the rule for the UK? Nurg (talk) 09:55, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Postal codes are also useful for entering into a SatNav, so I think they should be allowed. I actually seen them in plenty of articles already. -- WOSlinker (talk) 10:43, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

We do make an exception for the UK. That exception should be placed into the article, and I believe it will be uncontroversial. I'll take care of that now. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:06, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Pub crawls

Please remind me: Pub crawls such as the one listed in Tokyo/Roppongi#Do are not allowable under the tour policy, correct? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:58, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Yup, you can get pissed all by yourself and the guide part is redundant. --118.93nzp (talk) 08:22, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Does anyone disagree? I'll wait a day or so before removing the listing with a message, unless someone else beats me to it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:58, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Prices

Is the price parameter actually worth having in the listings? Prices do change but not many of the listings get updated to reflect the new prices, so when reading an article, there's a good chance that all the prices are wrong. Some people may say that at least you can compare the relative prices of places be that's not always true either as the listings may have been added at differnet times, and when a new one was added, the existing ones didn't get their prices updated, so you can't really compare them. A lot of the listings have website links so it's easy to look at their website for the actual prices, so why mislead people by including prices that are probably wrong. -- WOSlinker (talk) 11:44, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't think general price ranges change as often as you imply. Out-of-date listings are a problem, but I don't think it's a good solution to send people to a website and tell them to do their own research. Powers ^(talk) 14:55, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

General price ranges, or exact prices? K7L (talk) 15:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

We don't usually list exact prices, just ranges. Powers ^(talk) 00:51, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Outdated prices are a problem, as are outdated URLs and opening hours (though they change less often), but prices are usually still in the right ballpark, so while misleading, not grossly so. I wouldn't support removing the price parameter. The ideal solution, of course, is to have an increased editorship so that prices get updated more quickly. Nurg (talk) 07:00, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Learn

Guys, I think sometime ago we did have a discussion on the "Learn" section, if not here than perhaps at the Pub, where I remember those participating reaching a certain consensus as to deeming this section not quite necessary. I vaguely remember the main argument raised was that most tourist won't have enough time at the destination to actually learn anything, so a list of schools and universities will not be quite useful and will turn the guide into a yellow pages and double Wikipedia, which tends to list educational institutions in a city article.

As to short-term learing, e.g. quick language courses, those can be pretty generic and listing those could be an invitation to turn the guide into a yellow pages, much like we don't list spas/massage parlors/pedicure salons etc. however useful and sought-after they may be - in the age of ubiquitous Internet, this does not seem to be particularly necessary (unless this is the only nail salon in Bhutan I guess).

Finally, they may be unique opportunities to actually learn something that is not generic, obvious or of interest to a very defined group and not casual tourists. I would, however, find it perfectly fitting the "Do" section.

In short, I believe the "Learn" section is unnecessary, and its current use for creating a short directory of higher-level educational institutions in the city inappropriate for a travel guide.

What do you think? Am I the only one remembering this discussion? PrinceGloria (talk) 19:00, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

See Wikivoyage talk:What is an article?#New discussion for the previous discussion. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:07, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't remember seeing this discussion but I do agree with you that it's pretty superfluous in the destination articles. However I think it would be useful to keep a Learn section at country level with information about student visas, language proficiency requirements etc.

The same goes for the "Work" section as well. ϒpsilon (talk) 19:47, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Very few sections are "necessary"; the only required sections are "Get in", "Get around", "See", "Eat", and "Sleep". Using "Learn" in destination articles to simply list higher education institutions is widely disapproved. So I'm not clear on what change from current practice PrinceGloria is proposing here. Powers ^(talk) 00:15, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Currently "Learn" is a part of the default Wikivoyage:Huge city article template and Wikivoyage:Big city article template, so this proposal would probably mean removing it from those default templates and then removing it from existing articles where it isn't needed. However, that sort of proposal would probably need a wider audience, and thus might merit a pub discussion if someone wants to spearhead it. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:09, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree that "Learn" should not be a default section of destination articles below the country level and that language schools and the like might work better in "Learn" subsections of "Do," but I disagree that "we don't list spas and massage parlors." My experience from extensive patrolling is that yes we do, and I don't see why we shouldn't. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:13, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I actually do quite often visit a University or collage for a day or two in a town I may not know well, either to consult with a professor or researcher or to attend a conference. Also people visit new cities to check out their future study options. In many cases the university has considerable influence on the location and an important landmark (although not always notable architecture for see section). Agree a list of language schools is not what we want to have on pages but key higher education establishments should be noted and mapped. --Traveler100 (talk) 04:41, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Interestingly, that's pretty much the opposite of current policy, which is to list in the "Learn" section only those institutions of learning that offer courses of a few weeks or less. Universities that are landmarks could be listed under "See" as landmarks, even if they are not interesting architecturally. I think your point about the usefulness of listing notable universities for conference-goers and the like is a very good point. Frankly, I don't agree with the hostility toward non-touty listings for particularly important universities that some Wikivoyagers feel, but that's undoubtedly partly because of the academic background and associations that my parents and I had/have had. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:56, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

OK, for those academically minded (I am not, I don't have higher education and even basic writing skills are a challenge, as evidenced by my edit history ;) ), let us put that into perspective - I don't care much for universities, but I am very much into cars. I actually always do research beforehand and try to visit a few leading dealers in the town I am visiting. My mother is quite into spa and wellness and always tries to arrange for a few treatments wherever she goes. We could both use relevant listings but, with all due respect to the academiae, I find them just as niche. We live in the Internet age and the age of (duh) Wikipedia. Our guides will NOT serve all intents and purposes. Some specific information will need to be researched separately, this is just a brief introduction that you can browse, download or print out to get your bearings around the city. PrinceGloria (talk) 05:48, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Au contraire, your writing skills are very good, as shown by your edit history! But let me try another tack. Universities can be very important and influential institutions in cities. That's obvious in the case of college towns, such as Oxford, Champaign and the two Cambridges (Cambridge, England and Cambridge (Massachusetts), the home of Harvard and MIT). But it's also true of huge cities. In New York, I believe NYU and Columbia are the two biggest landlords in the city (unless they're the second- and third-biggest after the city government itself) and to a large degree dominate their neighborhoods. Juilliard is a world-famous conservatory of music, drama, and dance that serves the city's performing arts industries, which are such a draw for tourists from the four corners of the world, and hosts lots of high-level concerts, many of them free. The New School is home to various influential departments including the most important jazz school in New York, which feeds its graduates into the New York jazz scene and hosts a lot of concerts. If you know of any huge car dealerships that are similarly influential, they should be listed, too. I can think of a likely example: I have heard lots of ads for Flemington Car and Truck Country, outside the downtown area of Flemington, New Jersey, and I seem to remember that it's actually pretty huge. I guess the only issue is that tourists from far away probably won't be shopping for cars in Flemington; however, visitors who are close enough to drive there may indeed be interested in test driving a new or used car. (Incidentally, I just checked and there is such a listing in the Flemington guide.) Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:45, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Listings for w:Collier Motors and w:Miller Motors would be justified, as de-facto automotive museums, but every dealer in every town would not. Advising Torontonians on the red tape to bring home a four-wheeled souvenir of a Detroit trip might also be out of project scope. :) We're looking for things for travellers to see and do, the rest of this mess (from hotels and restaurants to souvenir vendors) only exists in a support rôle.

If a university has two museums and an art gallery we want each of those in "see", much like Dearborn (Michigan) will list the museums dedicated to Bill Ford's granddaddy's contraption as things to "see". Retaining "learn" and "work" at country level may make sense if there student or exchange visas for short-term visitors, but locally the university is just another landmark to see, with its architecture, concert halls and museums. K7L (talk) 16:32, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind making Learn and Work optional across the board, but it sounded like PrinceGloria was suggesting they should be abolished altogether, which I would oppose. I do think it should be made clear that these sections are in all cases exclusively reserved for short-term opportunities that a traveller might engage in without actually taking up residence. Learn should never in any case be there to present long-term education options or introduce local institutions due to their supposed regional cultural influence. Any mention of institutions of learning for any purpose other than short-term courses suitable for passers-thru area either important enough to be handled elsewhere (See, Understand, etc.) or they aren't relevant enough be mentioned at all. Texugo (talk) 17:25, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Certainly Ann Arbor and State College would be nonsensical articles without reference to the major land-grant universities they host, but might it not stand to reason that readers would look for information on higher-education institutions in a Learn section, such as Chicago#Learn? Note that in the Chicago example, the universities do not have full listings, just mentions in an overview of the educational environment in Chicago. Powers ^(talk) 17:59, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this remark by K7L: We're looking for things for travellers to see and do, the rest of this mess (from hotels and restaurants to souvenir vendors) only exists in a support rôle. K7L may see restaurants as just places to get energy for survival while on the road, but many travelers go around the world to experience great food and drink. Similarly, while many hotels are just places to get some shut-eye, there are also destination hotels. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:07, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

On the other hand, I do agree with this: Listings for w:Collier Motors and w:Miller Motors would be justified, as de-facto automotive museums, but every dealer in every town would not. Being a Yellow Pages is a non-goal of Wikivoyage, and just as we shouldn't list every auto dealership in places with a lot of auto dealerships, we definitely shouldn't be listing colleges in New York like New York Institute of Technology and John Jay, which are not of great importance. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:26, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Again, when did "importance" become a criterium for us to list something? How do we measure "importance"? Water treatment plants are important and actually quite vital for cities around the world, but do they belong in a travel guide? Let Wikipedia take care of "importance" (or rather, "notability"), we should focus here on usefulness for tourists. PrinceGloria (talk) 19:39, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I think it is a criterion. We will mention a major department store on 5th Av. in a Manhattan region guide, but not one of the two convenience stores on the corner of 7th St. and 1st Av., because they are unimportant and there are thousands and thousands of similar stores. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:58, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

And while normally, a water treatment plant wouldn't merit a listing here, if it can be visited and is interesting, it should be listed. In Paris, there is a sewer tour that many tourists take. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:33, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

w:Rapture (song) says to take a tour through the sewer, but it'd be either transportation (Get around#By boat) or an activity ("Do"). We don't need a separate section for these, when "Events and festivals" only gets a subsection (Do#Events) and public libraries get dumped mostly in "Connect" as Internet nodes. K7L (talk) 16:52, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm with K7L that it is odd to have a separate "Learn" section in city articles since we are essentially saying its sole purpose is to move the occasional cooking class or university listing out of the "Do" and "See" sections. To address the argument for inclusion of information about large universities, articles for towns like Oxford (Mississippi) or State College will by necessity use the "Understand" and other sections to cover the fact that a major reason for the town's existence is the university. An additional argument against a separate section is the fact that editors frequently add every technical college or high school in a town to this section, thus indicating that the goal of this section is confusing our readers and casual editors. I also agree with ϒpsilon that there is value to having this section in country articles as study abroad opportunities are hugely common. That said, if any action is going to come out of this discussion then someone will need to actually propose a change and solicit feedback from a larger audience, otherwise this will be an interesting discussion that does not actually change anything on the site. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:08, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree with this, too. I don't think "Learn" requires a separate section below the national level; at lower levels, it should be optional (it probably makes sense to have an overview in some huge city articles, for example). Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:23, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

It already is optional at lower levels. Texugo (talk) 20:50, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I mean excluded from the default article templates. Am I misunderstanding something? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:21, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

You mean to remove it from the big/huge city templates then? Fine by me. It is already not present in the region/smallcity/district templates. Texugo (talk) 22:07, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I think so. It should be non-default for all city templates, though it makes sense to give an overview in many cases. The other possibility is to keep it as a default for huge city templates, where it's likely to be relevant, but remove it as a default from big city templates. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:12, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to keep it for huge cities and remove it as default for big cities. If a city is big enough to require districting, it probably should have overviews of the education and work situation. Some other huge cities like Karachi may merit such sections, too, but a lot of big city articles are really not about really large cities by that standard at all. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:15, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Double-decker bus tours

I believe the ubiquitous and pricey hop on, hop off bus tours are inadmissible under this site's tour policy. Can someone please confirm before we revert this edit? Thanks. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:48, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I would suggest if there're too many bus tour companies operating at a particular place, lets mention only one which is more popular or most affordable. --Saqib (talk) 20:00, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I think we shouldn't list these at all. They're a ripoff, in my opinion, and can generally be done on inexpensive municipal buses, instead. But I want there to be a consensus. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:16, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Well I found them quite useful actually. When I visited Vienna back in 2011, I found the tour bus quite useful and a great easy way to see the beautiful city of Vienna. In Dubai, many tourists use the Big Bus tour otherwise the public transportation is not very extensive in the emirates and taxis are expensive. --Saqib (talk) 20:30, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I cannot comment on Austin but I have also found these type of bus tour a good way to get an overview of a city I am not familiar with. Get the lie of the land and identify what sites to go back to for a more detailed on foot look. --Traveler100 (talk) 20:39, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I used some of them, but I do agree, in most cities I know municipal transit is just as good, if not better, and much cheaper. In Copenhagen they even have a boat "bus" line that is IMHO better than the canal boat tours. I do not think we would be fair only choosing one - after all, can anybody honestly say they've checked out all? And do we have a reasonable plurality of opinions when making that decision?

I believe we tend not to, so we should list all of those services. And then, why limit ourselves to only double-decker bus tours and not other types of tours. And then we start opening the floodgates to linking to all kinds of different tour services, which TOUR is explicitly against.

Most of those bus tour services employ extensive marketing, so we can surely assume tourists won't miss them should they be looking for one. PrinceGloria (talk) 21:30, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

We should really talk about this more. I strongly believe that the rule should be that we don't list these, and I very much doubt there should be exceptions, and this is why:

If a traveller could fulfil the substance of the tour on their own, the tour should not be listed.

There are people who find it convenient to pay for these bus tours, and I take the point that in Dubai, for example, public transportation is scarce and taxis are expensive. However, every city that has these tours surely has car rentals. There is nothing esoteric about tour bus routes, I'm sure we can all agree! Nor are these specialized tour guides, such as archeologists conducting tours of Pompeii. So presumably, any tourist who can drive and knows the route can take it and just get out where s/he wants to, traffic and parking laws allowing. If we decide these kinds of tours should be listed, are we not completely junking our tour policy? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:26, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I cannot see how you could compare driving round a Western European city you do not know in a car with sitting in a double decker bus. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:24, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

You want to allow tours for cities? The same principle would obtain for taking a bus tour of some countryside, rather than driving on country roads you don't know. Again: It completely junks our tour policy. Which tours don't we list if we list urban double-decker bus tours, and why do we not list them? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:29, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

If the hop-on, hop-off bus is transportation, we should treat it much like other transportation options... such as car rental agencies. If there is one hire car stand in the village, we list it. If there are a hundred, we reduce the level of detail to merely acknowledging their existence. I disagree with a "we don't list buses because I like hire cars" stance as that's no different from saying "I want to remove all the hire cars because bicycles are a healthier, more environmentally alternative" -- both are legitimate means of transport, despite their respective limitations. K7L (talk) 19:27, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm willing to tolerate listings for these buses in "Get around," but definitely not in "Do" as tour listings. If that's how we have to compromise, fine. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:29, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

But this still bugs me. All tours involve transportation of some kind. Are we therefore going to list all kinds of tours just for that reason? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:34, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Note, please, that free walking tour listings have been deleted, although they're obviously much cheaper than these double-decker bus tours, and I'll bet they're often a lot better. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:37, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm with K7L on this one. Hop-on, hop-off tour buses are a Get Around option, and should be treated like taxis and car rentals, not as activities. In most cases, there's no need for full listings, as we would with most activities; simply listing them, or stating their presence if there are too many to list, is more than sufficient. That isn't a violation of our tour policy, in my book. Powers ^(talk) 00:49, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

And in that case, why are we excluding walking tours again? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:13, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Because we already have Walk sections in Get Around and all a walking tour adds is the tour part. Powers ^(talk) 11:25, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

The travel topic Guided city tours is considered a form of Transportation, so Get around is the probably the best place to put them in those cases where we list them. Yes, it looks like hop on-hop off violate the tour policy so they should in general not be added unless there's a reason to (just like other tours).

In places where it is challenging/unsafe/uncomfortable to get around by public transportation/taxis/rental car AND there are not tens of those companies it could be useful to add them. ϒpsilon (talk) 17:47, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Ypsilon. I think that as a rule, these bus tours should not be listed, but I can see a reason to list them in "Get around" under the kinds of special circumstances he outlines. Why do most of you disagree and think we should list these routinely? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:11, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

For the same reason we talk about taxis. Why should we pretend not to know anything about a popular transportation option for tourists? Powers ^(talk) 18:51, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Taxis, except under quite unusual circumstances (e.g., Belfast's Black Taxi Tours, which actually provide quite a lot of added value), are in fact purely transportation options. How many people really use those double-decker tour buses just for transportation? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:27, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Why does it have to be "purely" transportation? Powers ^(talk) 20:21, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I'll quote back to you what you posted about walking tours: "[A]ll a walking tour adds is the tour part." Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:23, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not following. Powers ^(talk) 01:37, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

If few people are taking those generally quite expensive bus tours as merely transportation, they are tours, and should be prohibited listings, unless we want to revisit the entire subject of tour listings. It's really similar to the difference between a visitor doing their own walking self-tour and having a guided walking tour, and we don't list guided walking tours unless there's something special about them. I can see I've been on the losing side of this argument so far, but I really don't see these tour buses as mainly a form of transportation, and still think that they shouldn't be listable except in special circumstances like those User:Saqib explained apply to Dubai. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:16, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Ikan Kekek is certainly right if he is implying that policies are easier to explain (especially to touts and newbies) if they have internal consistency.

However, I do think that there should be exceptions for some types of tour where many travellers may have difficulty with local scripts/languages/transport options. Is there also a case for excepting official/quasi-officially sanctioned tours such as the ones offered at Singapore's airport and by Turkish Airlines at Istanbul? Both of these are free of charge and, thus, remove the competitive touting element which led us to crack down on tours in the first place. -- Alice^✉ 06:02, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I'd be willing to support allowing listings for any free tour, but free walking tours have not been considered admissible. I'd favor listing them and the free bus tours you refer to, and not listing paid bus tours, except under special circumstances. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:24, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

That's going the wrong direction. Maybe we're talking about different kinds of bus tours here, but it seems to me a hop-on hop-off bus service is a valuable transportation option regardless of whether or not it offers narration from a guide. A walking tour doesn't have that virtue; it's not a separate transportation option at all. Powers ^(talk) 18:42, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

It sure is! Perhaps you don't know anyone who has a poor sense of direction while walking in a city. I know someone who can get lost in the part of Manhattan that has a grid. Anyway, what's "wrong" about listing a free walking tour, I'd like to know. Isn't the whole problem with tour listings that they are mostly touting and too many of them clutter up articles in ways that are unhelpful to independent travellers reading them? I don't think these things apply to purely free tours, especially since many of our readers would probably love to know about anything free that's fun. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:19, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

My understanding is that it's for the same reason we don't link to other travel guides. We require a value-added service for tours because otherwise the substance of the tour should be included here where all users can use it. Someone can use our guides and their own feet to replicate a walking tour; not so a hop-on hop-off transport. Powers ^(talk) 20:27, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Please explain how that isn't true of any type of tour that includes non-walking transportation. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:16, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Because most people don't own a bus and employ a driver? Powers ^(talk) 00:57, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Please reread my question and see if you have any thoughts about it. Thanks. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:44, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Ikan, I'm trying to be fair here but you're driving me crazy with your crypticness. You asked me to explain how "someone can use our guides and their own feet to replicate a walking tour" "isn't true of any type of tour that includes non-walking transportation". The difference is that anyone who has our guide and the ability to walk (so: most people) can duplicate the substance of the walking tour, while one would need some form of transportation accessible to them in order to duplicate the substance of a hop-on hop-off transportation mode. If you have a problem with my explanation, please explain what I didn't explain, rather than simply tell me to reread what you wrote before (which, trust me, I read several times while composing my reply). Powers ^(talk) 18:55, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough, and I'm sorry to be driving you crazy. The part you haven't addressed is this: Except in unusual situations, like the one Saqib mentioned in Dubai, I submit that few tourists take hop-on hop-off bus tours strictly for transportation. So that being the case, the real reason they're taking them is for a tour. Similarly, people can use their feet for transportation but might not have a good sense of direction or know what to look for. Just as an expensive bus tour can help orient people and direct them toward things to see, a walking tour - especially if given by knowledgeable people who know a neighborhood and can give background you won't get without being in person with such locals, by contrast with some of the bus tour guides, as there have been lots of exposes of the misinformation ill-trained bus tour guides give in cities like New York - can be helpful, and if it's free, it is purely value added. Is this making sense? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:38, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Your submission that "few tourists take hop-on hop-off bus tours strictly for transportation" is noted, but I don't know how true it is; all I have is your assertion. However, I also don't know if it's useful, even if it is true. Firstly, I think "strictly" is too high a standard; "primarily" should be sufficient. Secondly, though, it seems this metric would require us to draw a distinction between 'tours with hop-on hop-off service' on one hand and 'hop-on hop-off services with touristic narration' on the other. I'm not sure where we'd draw that line; are you?

The fact that a walking tour is free should have no bearing on whether or not we list it; I am baffled by your focus on that aspect. I'd encourage you to check out Wikivoyage talk:Activity listings; the first section on that page is where the original policy was hashed out, and you can see that it's got nothing to do with payment. Even the "fulfill the substance of the tour on their own" clause wasn't added until several months had passed. The original point was to ban "tours" that involved Some Dude driving you around town in a car, as well as tour agencies that book your services for you. A tour company that also serves as a mode of transportation meets that intent, while following Some Dude around on foot doesn't. In my opinion. Powers ^(talk) 17:11, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

The argument I'm making about free walking tours is that if a tour is free, unless it sucks, it's all value added. In any case, I would say that there is a consensus (even if some of us are still skeptical) to allow listings for hop-on, hop-off bus tour listing, but only as "Get around" listings and never as "Do" listings, still less listings in a "Tours" subsection, and with no specific listings when there are many companies conducting them in a given city, similar to this site's policy on rental car agency listings. I'll have only intermittent internet access for the next week and a half or so, but if someone would like to draft a statement stipulating this rough consensus in a clear way for addition to this page, that would be great. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:34, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

That's not what "value-added" means. It's not a comment on the value versus the price; it means that there must be some value in addition to simply being a tour. Powers ^(talk) 16:59, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

In at least some cases, such as walking tours I've happened upon in the East Village and Chinatown, the guides are locals or other people who have historical information and experiences that would be hard to find and different to read on the pages of a book or website. I'd call that a lot more than just a tour guided by "some dude." Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:16, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

That may be, but such has always been against our policy, under the assumption that said locals (or others with similar backgrounds) could write down their spiels and send you off on your own. And even so, even a knowledgeable tour guide is still a tour guide; I reiterate that "value-added" means some value beyond simply being a tour (or a tour guide). Powers ^(talk) 13:27, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Hold it, you're saying that kind of guided tour is against our policy, because in an alternate universe someone could write all of it down? So a tour of Pompeii guided by an archeologist is against our policy? If that's truly current policy, I strongly oppose it. I think that guided tours should be listed if there's something really special about them that's more than merely a run-of-the-mill "take the travelers here, then there, and offer some precooked commentary that doesn't require special expertise." Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:16, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

@LtPowers:Don't forget that some free walking tours are an excellent way to meet and interact with the locals - Western men need to consider that many orientals and females may be rather shy about spontaneous chatting and these tours provide a format that gets around those problems of shyness or not wanting to approach local males when unaccompanied by an escort. I'm probably atypical for my gender and ethnicity because my job brings me into daily contact with strangers from many lands and cultures, but in many countries I find these free walking tours (often operated by local students studying English or lonely and bored old-age pensioners) invaluable. Please answer the point about free tours lacking the financial incentive for inundating us with touting. (I don't think your point about other guides/websites pertinent here). -- Alice^✉ 18:20, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

[undent] Would anyone like to take this and run with it? "I would say that there is a consensus (even if some of us are still skeptical) to allow listings for hop-on, hop-off bus tour[s], but only as "Get around" listings and never as "Do" listings, still less listings in a "Tours" subsection, and with no specific listings when there are many companies conducting them in a given city, similar to this site's policy on rental car agency listings....if someone would like to draft a statement stipulating this rough consensus in a clear way for addition to this page, that would be great." Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:09, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

This is a lengthy discussion and this has probably been raised before, but it is fairly obvious to me that most hop-on/hop-off bus tours can be replicated by simply taking a regular city bus and having a day pass, which is usually cheaper, allows more flexibility and free from awful recorded touristy commentary. I really fail to see what value we provide by listing those, which usually come quite aplenty, and not list other types of tours. I believe we should be more firm and not list tours altogether, this would be a clearer policy. PrinceGloria (talk) 16:31, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you, but I also assert that there is a consensus to allow these listings under specified conditions, and I'd rather have a clear policy, even one I don't really agree with, than no clear policy. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:43, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Do we have an actual example where such a bus tour makes for a form of transportation that cannot be substituted by using public transport (which I believe is the only specified condition that was agreed upon)? PrinceGloria (talk) 21:52, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree that public transportation is always a valid substitute for these kind of transport options. These buses usually stop exclusively at major tourist locations, don't they? Municipal systems usually aren't nearly as direct. Powers ^(talk) 01:51, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Don't we alos have a consensus to allow official/quasi-officially sanctioned tours such as the ones offered at Singapore's airport and by Turkish Airlines at Istanbul since both of these are free of charge and, thus, remove the competitive touting element which led us to crack down on tours in the first place? -- Alice^✉ 02:11, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

1. LtPowers - please provide an example and I will try to show you that there is a convenient way to get between each to points on the tour with public transportation, as my experience tells me so usually. The major tourist interest points are usually well covered by, and often the focal points of, the public transportation system in a city. There rarely is a city where major sights exist totally separately from the rest of the city and are not served well by public transit. Moreover, many cities run special lines to cater to tourists which usually stop at many of the major sights on purpose.
2. Alice - it is misleading to label those "free". You need to have an international flight through either airport to take part, and those are not free. I see no problem with mentioning in passing when describing the airport that if you happen to have a long layover, you can take such a tour. Both airports actually have their own guides, which is where I'd put such info. I guess describing the tour in any more details is beyond out scope and the tourist will be better served with just an xl to their webpage.

--PrinceGloria (talk) 05:23, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

PrinceGloria, Saqib gave the example of Dubai above, near the top of this thread. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:55, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't know Dubai well, but I took the bus map and clicked through Google Maps and found quite direct ways to get between some sample points I took by bus or metro or a combination thereof. There are well-served public transit stops next to the POIs listed on the tour bus maps I checked. The public buses and metro seem to run quite frequently, is it costly or in any way inconvenient or not advisable to use them? PrinceGloria (talk) 09:17, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Niagara Falls Scenic Trolley: http://www.niagarafallsstatepark.com/niagara-scenic-trolley.aspx Powers ^(talk) 20:30, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

This is nota double-decker bus tour of a city like ones we're discussing here, let's stick to the topic at hand. PrinceGloria (talk) 21:18, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

What's the difference, besides the number of decks (which would seem to be immaterial)? Powers ^(talk) 00:45, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

If you need me to explain the difference between a state park and a city, I give up. PrinceGloria (talk) 00:51, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Especially a natural wonder like Niagara Falls. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:54, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Niagara Falls is a city. Humor me. I really don't understand the difference. The Scenic Trolley is my primary experience with hop-on hop-off tours so it's been my point of reference throughout this discussion. Powers ^(talk) 13:27, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

OK, I now see where you are coming from better. Niagara Falls as such is a city, but the trolley is only a means of transportation within the State Park, isn't it? A comparable example is the narrow-gauge railway that runs inside the expansive Prater Park in Vienna. Vienna is a city. The railway is in Vienna. It transports people and is an actually practical and uncontested way of getting around within the park. But we do not mention it in "Get around", but rather as a part of description of a POI within the park. And I would keep it that way for similar cass.

That said, the double-decker bus tours we are talking about here which are prevalent in European cities, and some Asian and Middle Eastern destinations recently as well, are a different kind of animal. They tend to run in dense urban environments where POIs are scattered across the actual city tissue, and not confined to a specific area like the park. Thus, between those points you can usually get by using the city's public transportation system as well pretty much by definition - most European cities have a dense public transportation network and it is uncommon for a POI not to be close to a bus/tram/metro/ferry stop, as well as it is uncommon for a POI not to be a major destination for users of the regular public transportation system just as well. PrinceGloria (talk) 19:53, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the clarification. It still seems to me, though, that these buses qualify as a transit option. They may be tours, but their hop-on, hop-off nature allows them to be used for transit. Shouldn't we provide readers with all of the available transit options and let them decide, rather than disqualifying certain options because they also have narration? Powers ^(talk) 22:20, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Whereupon, I go back to my previous point, which is that there is a need to clarify when these tour buses may be listed and where, and someone needs to write a draft policy. I suppose if no-one else is willing to do so, I may choose to write the draft policy, but I'd have trouble arguing for it, as I still don't really support these kinds of listings. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:24, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The difference in price between such tours and public transportation options is usually quite sizeable/fewfold, while any added value marginal or negative (e.g. the tour WON'T stop at some points along the way or omit some, while a day pass of the public transport covers everything). They are also more ephemeric in nature than public transportation. This is not a case of a train vs. coach vs. plane vs. ship/ferry connection, I believe that while one can use the double-decker bus tour for transit, they are clearly inferior in every way. The only benefit is not in their transit capacities, but rather in the fact that there is a certain route that may help somebody organize their sightseeing, which is a benefit of every tour regardless of medium. PrinceGloria (talk) 05:44, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

On the contrary, by dint of their fewer stops, it seems that sightseeing buses are both quicker and more efficient than municipal transit. Powers ^(talk) 21:10, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Listings for chain stores/shops/restaurants

Swept in from the pub

In a number of the articles, in the Buy, Eat and Drink sections there are listings for large chain stores and restaurants such as Walmart, McDonald's, Starbucks, ASDA, Sainsubrys, Tesco, etc. Just wondering if there is a need for these since they are quite commons, so most places won't be too far from one, is there much point in including them or would it be better to only list places that make the place more unique? Here's a couple of example articles, Rock Springs, Hyde, Tamworth (England), Chelmsford (Massachusetts), but there are plenty more. —The preceding comment was added by WOSlinker (talk • contribs)

See Wikivoyage:Listings#Boring places for the official guidance. For very small towns with only a handful of businesses I'll usually leave the chain restaurants in place since those are the only options, but for towns with several options available it is generally best to remove the chain listings and just include a line of text that mentions they can be found. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:47, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

We don't need full {{listing}}s describing these places because each location of a franchise is interchangeable, but a passing mention may be in order if they're the local boarding point for an intercity bus or the only wi-fi hotspot in a small village. If there's a cluster of these in one location (often a motorway offramp), then list the whole group as one ("Various fast-food chains, including McDonald's, Wendy's, Harvey's, KFC and Piza Pizza, are available at the highway 41 offramp, southbound") with no detail. The country-level article likely already explains any differences between Wendy's and McDo, so no need to repeat these. The bulk of our text should go to describing what's unique about a town; the traveller doesn't visit a place just to see the "Stagecoach PLC" terminal or the "Holiday Inn Express" but if they're needed as infrastructure to get the visitor to something unique they want to see, their presence is tolerable. Even a petrol station might be worth a "buy" listing if it's the last fuel for 180km or so (which is rare, but happens). K7L (talk) 16:58, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Might be worth having a clearout. I'll have a look at time point. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:52, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

The criteria are different for overseas locations where these places are rarer. In China, for example, we generally do not list the ubiquitous McDonald's and KFC, but we do mention the Burger King in Jinjiang and in many cities we cover the European supermarkets that many expats consider essential — British Tesco, French Carrefour and especially German Metro. Pashley (talk) 21:37, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Tesco and Carrefour are basically Chinese supermarkets and stock very few imported products. I don't think listing those is any more relevant for expats/travelers than local ones. I agree that in China it is relevant to list supermarkets that do offer a significant amount of imported products such as 'City Super' and 'Ole'. Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:53, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Phone numbers with extensions and numbers with LETTERS in them

Currently, when the listings template tries to link numbers with extensions at the end or numbers with LETTERS in them, it can't and add the entry to Category:Listing with phone format issue.

I've been working on an update to the template that will handle these cases. Some examples are below:

Input Text	Result
+1 234 8378-464	+1 234 8378-464
+1 (234) TEST-ING	+1 (234) TEST-INGCategory:Listing with phone format issueFORMAT
+1 234 test-ing	+1 234 test-ingCategory:Listing with phone format issueFORMAT
+1 234 TEST-ING	+1 234 TEST-ING (8378-464)
+1 613-546-4291 EXT 1666	+1 613-546-4291 EXT 1666
+1 613-546-4291 Ext 1666	+1 613-546-4291 Ext 1666
+1 613-546-4291 ext 1666	+1 613-546-4291 Ext 1666
+1 613-546-4291 x1666	+1 613-546-4291 x1666
+1 613-546-4291 x 1666	+1 613-546-4291 x 1666Category:Listing with phone format issueFORMAT
+1-87-PCT-INFO-1	+1-87-PCT-INFO-1 (728-4636-1)
+1-212-PE6-5000	+1-212-PE6-5000 (736-5000)
+1-212-PEnnsylvania 6-5000	+1-212-PEnnsylvania 6-5000Category:Listing with phone format issueFORMAT
+1 613-EXT-1666	+1 613-EXT-1666 (398-1666)

It will convert a text number into numbers. All the letters need to be uppercase and the only other characters in the phone number are spaces or dashes then the conversion will be done, otherwise it will not and the entry would be added to the tracking category.

Any thoughts before I look at making this live? -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:43, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Looks good! Extensions are often written like "+1 613-546-4291 x1666", though; should we accept that format or deprecate it? Powers ^(talk) 16:01, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I could add support for that as well. Would only do it for numbers ending in "space lowercase x numbers" so as to avoid any false positives. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:17, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I've added the other ext format support and also a couple of temporary tracking categories so that we can see which listings are affect by the changes. This would make it easier to check that the changes are ok. -- WOSlinker (talk) 05:51, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Category:Listing with phone format issue is down from 3,169 to 2,854 articles. -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:39, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

What "value added" should mean for tour listings

In the discussion of Double-decker bus tours, at least three lines of discussion have taken place: (1) Whether such tours are primarily a form of transportation or an expensive tour that doesn't add much value that couldn't be attained by taking another form of transportation without commentary from a guide; (2) whether the policy on listing such tours should be more clearly codified; (3) what "value added" means in regard to tour listings. I want to focus on the third point in this thread.

Some relevant current wording of this site's tour policy:

Tours can be listed on Wikivoyage as long as they constitute a value-added activity. If a traveller could fulfil the substance of the tour on their own, the tour should not be listed.

Tours should offer something as a supplement, rather than a replacement for Wikivoyage guides. They should count as an activity available at a destination (e.g., a helicopter tour of a city, or a camel expedition into the Sahara).

I've been interpreting the tour policy as also allowing tours that add a lot of value, not only if they include safaris or something, but also if they are led by unusually expert people, such as tours of Pompeii led by professional archeologists, and I would also suggest that a tour of the East Village that I happened upon that was led by people who were rockers who performed and saw concerts at Fillmore East and other historically important venues and lived in the neighborhood back in the day, and an architectural history tour I happened upon in Manhattan's Chinatown (ex-Lower East Side), which included amazing information about the history of a building that a person passing the small side of it on Canal St. would never know had been a major theater, should be listable. I would also cite tours that used to be given (and perhaps still are?) by a brilliant British art historian at the Cathedral in Chartres add so much value in understanding the way the cathedral looked to pilgrims in the Middle Ages and how they, for example, read the stained glass windows, that if it's still happening, it should be listed.

User:LtPowers pointed out that the expert guidance I'm talking about is not a value-added activity, and also made the claim that in theory, all of the guidance could be written down somewhere in a book, but even to the extent that's true, reading a book is not the same experience as having someone in person who can point things out and tell anecdotes in real time, and answer questions.

Let me emphasize that I don't mean to allow run-of-the-mill tours to be listed. However, I really think that if a tour is outstanding in a clearly explainable way - which means not a general-interest tour led by a regular tour guide but a tour that is specialized and led by someone who has particular expertise, either as a professional in an academic subject (archeology, architectural history, a tour of the Olduvai Gorge led by a distinguished paleontologist) or someone who was there back in the day and participated, and can talk about their experiences of living in a neighborhood during the beginning of the punk movement or the Summer of Love or what have you. The burden should remain on those describing the tour to indicate indisputably that the tour adds substantial value, compared to just showing up and walking through the area by yourself, and over and above an ordinary guided tour.

I expect to get a lot of pushback for this post, but I feel pretty strongly about what "value added" should mean, and I don't think it's just an unusual activity. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:44, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikivoyage talk:Activity listings has the history behind our policy. There, Peter lays out the case for the interpretation I've been using (and, I believe, the first time "value-added" was used in reference to said policy):

In response to Cacahuate's comment, I think we often should list tours even when they are not necessary. It's not necessary (or at all cool) to tour downtown Chicago with a horde of segway riders, but that is kind of interesting, clearly a supplement to our guides, and some readers might be interested. We should not farm out itineraries/maps to tour agencies, but we should also recognize that certain types of tours offer things we cannot. For example, no matter how much effort goes into the Chicago skyline guide, we cannot actually fly someone around the skyline on a prop-plane as "Tri-Star Pilot Service Tours" can. So I still think the trick is to clearly delineate what kind of tours belong.

As for where to stick tours, I think we should mandate that they go in the "do" section to emphasize that any tours listed must constitute a value-added activity. If a tour is not an activity, then it probably does not belong in our guides (so no generic "sightseeing" tours where someone is just taking you around, but the lame double-decker bus London tours would be ok). I'm thinking of drafting a policy based on this discussion at Project:Activity listings. That article should exist in any rate. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 02:42, 20 July 2007 (EDT)

-- Powers ^(talk) 22:29, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the background. Much appreciated. Nevertheless, I'd still like for my interpretation of "value added" to be considered. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:24, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

For multiple reasons, I would avoid listing tours at all. The most important being the fact that I find it impossible to draw a clear line between "value-added" and "non-value-added" tours and once we open the floodgates, it would be hard to stop the influx. Moreover, the potential waste of time for discussions of what is essentially always a quite subjective viewpoint (on whether a tour is "value added") will consume much of our resources and draw attention away from the core issues, I believe, as evidenced by the discussion above. PrinceGloria (talk) 05:48, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I get your point, but while we certainly could avoid listing all optional tours such as the ones I describe above, we surely can't stop adding tour listings for places where a tour is the only way to get there, such as North Korea. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:47, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I also still think that truly exceptional tours should be listable. We make decisions all the time about which "Buy" listings are truly useful to visitors and which are not. Lots of decisions on this site are made on a pragmatic rather than dogmatic basis. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:09, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The problem I've always had with walking tours, bus tours, and other tours is generally that in large cities they tend to feel spammy - a list of six different walking tours, all with descriptions that are nothing more than the destinations they visit, feels more like advertising than activity listings. In those cases, the "value-added" guidance, while subjective, has been a clear way to remove spammy listings. However, for many travelers these sorts of tours are value added, so they are something that probably do belong in our guides, and I agree that it would be nice to avoid subjective judgments where possible.

What about keeping the existing wording (or even tightening it), while noting that things like walking tours, bus tours, or other "guided" tours should only get separate listings if they are famous and draw large numbers of tourists (like London's double decker bus tours) OR if there are two (?) or fewer of the tour type (walking/guided, segway, etc) operating in a location? That is similar to our current guidance on car rental companies, would make it easy to patrol, but would still open the door to some tour listings without creating a flood of spammy adverts. -- Ryan • (talk) • 14:43, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

My feeling is that tour listings that don't clearly indicate why a tour is particularly unusual shouldn't be allowed at all, except when a place can't be reached or is extremely difficult to reach without a tour. I like the reasonable tone of your suggestion, though. One thing that would need more discussion is how we determine what is particularly famous. An archeologist-led tour of Pompeii might not be famous, but it could be great. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:47, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of having to evaluate a guide's professional qualifications before deciding whether or not his tour is listable. It's much better to look strictly at the special activity or access that the tour offers, because those are much more objective criteria. Powers ^(talk) 21:04, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I understand the practicality of your approach. Would you accept, though, at least as a general proposition, that it doesn't really serve the traveler to prohibit listings of truly outstanding and unusual tours? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:01, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. While the traveler comes first, we cannot always accommodate their every need. For example, travelers often need to know the names of taxi companies, but we don't usually provide them. (For different reasons than are under discussion, here, of course, but the principle is the same: we don't always include everything a traveler might want to know.) How would you propose to identify "truly outstanding and unusual tours" without causing tendentious discussions over whether Tour A or Tour B qualifies? Powers ^(talk) 00:46, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I definitely get your points and pretty much agree. I guess it would be a lot harder to change the rule than to simply allow a consensus for exceptions now and then in particular cases, which I think is already the practice for most rules on this site. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:22, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I think I'd be more generous than most others here, Certainly I'd allow all of these:

• • Required tours, where it may be possible to visit only by tour. North Korea, sometimes Tibet, ...

(I'd include things like trekking in Nepal because you have to show trek receipts to extend a visa.)

• • Official tours, where a museum, cathedral, parliament, ... or city/region tourist bureau offers the service.
  • Special equipment: hot air balloon, helicopter, ...
  • Major safety concerns: SCUBA, mountain trekking, ...
  • Well-known tours, like London by double decker bus, Amsterdam canal boats, ...

(But then, Ottawa has both and it is not as clear they should be listed. I would, but there's more room for debate.)

Then I wonder about allowing listings of guides for areas where most travellers will need a translator. Pashley (talk) 23:09, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I certainly agree with listing everything through "Major safety concerns." I'm not too familiar with the London double decker bus tours (I thought I saw the names of the same companies that operate those in New York on the tour buses), but I would certainly list Amsterdam canal boats and understand that, since that's an activity and not easy to do without your own boat, they can be listed under current policy. I'd definitely hesitate to support adding listings of guides to act as translators. I was able to attain survival-level Chinese for a trip in 1987, part of which was taken alone. Resourceful independent travelers can manage without knowing much of a language. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:20, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I think most of Pashley's categories are already allowed. Even Peter, who drafted the initial tour policy, thought the London buses should be allowed. Powers ^(talk) 00:46, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

(Oh, and with the caveat that official tours should be incorporated into the listing for the item in question rather than a separate "Do" listing.) Powers ^(talk) 00:55, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I would agree with most of what Pashley mentioned (with the same reservation as LtPowers), although going up in a baloon is a "Do" thing to me. Scuba diving, though, seem like a pretty common activity wherever it is practiced, like Egypt. I would disagree about well-known - I do not think that any of the double decker tours London offers is particularly well-known, and I don't think any of the operators is special enough to be listed over the others, finally I don't think ANY of the tours offered merits a listing. I would go by required (go into "Get in" for destinations or into POI contents for POIs), official for POIs (same), unique vehicle (baloon / submarine / glass bottom boat etc. - all go into "Do") andt that's it. No separate listings for other tours, no listings for double-decker bus tours in particular. PrinceGloria (talk) 04:54, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

PS. One thing I would be lenient on allowing as a "Do" or "Get around" thing, depending on circumstances, are river/canal cruises.

Scuba diving requires instruction and certification, and it can certainly be dangerous and even fatal if done wrong. I would strongly oppose a policy against listing scuba clubs. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:53, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

For that matter, some destinations would be very difficult to reach were it not for tour boats. There is no CitiBus to Boldt Castle or Singer Castle if they are built on individual private islands. K7L (talk) 14:23, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I’m thinking much along the same lines as Prince. Tours required to access some place, be it Antarctica, Panmunjeom or some castle: include (almost) always.

For Do-tours: can you practically/safely do it on your own, “access the activity” so to say? If you can't: the tour should be listed. However we do also prefer not listing boring places that are not unique to the region. Doesn't this include tours too? So: camel expedition into Sahara? Yes. Helicopter tour of a city? Perhaps. Pub crawl? Probably not.

Finally we have Get around/sightseeing tours. For sights that are spread around a large area (say, a national park) I do think tours are useful. Far from everyone wants to rent a car and regular rural public transportation is practically never geared towards getting tourists between sights. Hiring a taxi for a whole day may be a good idea in a low-income country, but in e.g. Western Europe that would cost hundreds of Euros.

In cities on the other hand, distances are shorter and transportation usually better. Therefore a sightseeing tour of any kind does often not add any “value” and shouldn't be listed. But in the case they are a practical way of getting around, I’m not totally against listing them. Imagine a place where the bus routes are like a portion of spaghetti, with deficient street signage and route maps, locals do just speak their native language (and you do not) and your bus trip might land you in some favela on the other side of the town (as would a taxi ride) - well this is for sure a scenario where a hop-on hop-off listing can be useful...

As for “exceptionally famous tours”; I think this would have to be decided on a case to case basis, with a slight preference for not listing them. Official tours by cathedrals and such can of course be mentioned in the listings. ϒpsilon (talk) 14:30, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

What about l'Île d'Orléans, a common day trip for visitors to Québec City but far enough not to be on that city's municipal transit. There's a bridge, so visitors with cars could drive there, but try to go "By bus" [1] (par autobus) and the "Orléans Express" goes to Québec City, not the island. There's something or other branded "PLUMobile" as municipal transit to the island, weekdays, four times daily. It's about ten miles (15km) and apparently they have wi-fi[2] but it's a weekday commuter bus. Travellers have a nasty tendency to show up on weekends and not all bring motorcars (Québec City's narrow streets run basically vertically and there's nowhere to park). Perhaps Île d'Orléans#Get in should list the PLUMobile but also mention (without listing them all) that plenty of Québec local tour buses do visit the island seven days a week? K7L (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Île d'Orléans does seem like such a "rural" sight where it is useful to mention tours as a means of getting in. ϒpsilon (talk) 16:44, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Multiple Phone Numbers

Recently has been introduced the nice feature of turn the phone numbers (with a correct format) into clickable links to perform phone calls.

Many listings have more than one telephone number (typically a land-line and a mobile phone, but sometimes other combinations) and all these cases fall into the Category:Listing with phone format issue, even when those numbers are correctly separated (e.g. +CC XXXXXXX, +CC XXXXXXX, +CC XXXXXXX ... or maybe with a different separator character). As a mere example I can mention several guesthouses/hostels in Iceland that I've contacted months ago to book some rooms and they have 3 numbers: landline of the guesthouse used during peak season (Summer), mobile phone and anohter land line of their habitation to be used when the structure is closed (Winter) and there is communication problem with the mobile.

I think that would be easier (for an editor) and more flexible to accept more numbers in this parameter instead of creating new ones (as already proposed above). If accepted, the Lua module could be able to match a well defined pattern (other country code inside the string) to understand where is the beginning of a following number (so regardless of the quantity of phone numbers written in it).

Please share your thoughts. --Andyrom75 (talk) 10:24, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

It's not just the separators causing the problem, often additional text describes what each of these numbers do:

• Hotel California, ☏ +1-213-959-5000 (reservations), +1-213-959-1976 (restaurant), +1-213-959-1977 (bar), +1-213-959-GOLF (4653) (pro shop), toll-free: +1-800-555-0199, fax: +1-213-959-1313. 

That creates the problem of separating vanity numbers (+1-800-HOLIDAY and the like) from extraneous, non-diallable text. K7L (talk) 13:06, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree that mixing text with numbers would be difficult (if not impossible) to separate, unless introducing a rigid syntax but I would avoid it. If we accept only telephone numbers separated by a character, the situation would be different. --Andyrom75 (talk) 18:47, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I've added support for a word in brackets at the end of the phone number in the sandbox version. Just got to look at supporting multiple phone numbers next. -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:01, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Multiple numbers are supported now as well, but only if separated by a comma. " and " / " or " separators are converted into commas as long as the next number starts with a + -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:18, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Input Text	Result
+1 (234) 8378-464	+1 (234) 8378-464
+1 (234) 8378-464 (Winter)	+1 (234) 8378-464 (Winter)
+1 234.8378.464 (Winter)	+1 234.8378.464 (Winter)Category:Listing with phone format issueFORMAT
+1 234 8378-464 (Winter)	+1 234 8378-464 (Winter)
+1 234 8378-464 ext 123 (Winter)	+1 234 8378-464 ext 123 (Winter)
+1-87-PCT-INFO-1	+1-87-PCT-INFO-1 (728-4636-1)
+1-87-PCT-INFO-1 (Pro-shop)	+1-87-PCT-INFO-1 (728-4636-1) (Pro-shop)
+1-213-959-5000, +1-213-959-1976, +1-213-959-1977, +1-213-959-GOLF	+1-213-959-5000, +1-213-959-1976, +1-213-959-1977, +1-213-959-GOLF (4653)
+1-213-959-5000 (reservations), +1-213-959-1976 (restaurant), +1-213-959-1977 (bar), +1-213-959-GOLF (pro shop)	+1-213-959-5000 (reservations), +1-213-959-1976 (restaurant), +1-213-959-1977 (bar), +1-213-959-GOLF (4653) (pro shop)
+1-213-959-5000 (reservations), +1-213-959-1976 (restaurant)	+1-213-959-5000 (reservations), +1-213-959-1976 (restaurant)
+1-213-959-5000 (reservations) or +1-213-959-1976 (restaurant)	+1-213-959-5000 (reservations), +1-213-959-1976 (restaurant)
+44 20 7930 4832 (ask for Her Majesty Elizabeth II)	+44 20 7930 4832 (ask for Her Majesty Elizabeth II)
+44 (0) 20 7930 4832 (ask for Her Majesty Elizabeth II)	+44 (0) 20 7930 4832 (ask for Her Majesty Elizabeth II)Category:Listing with phone format issueFORMAT

It's seems to perfectly work. It gives the chance to just list more numbers or to specify also (in brackets) the nature of each single number. For me it's fine to be implemented as it is. --Andyrom75 (talk) 15:20, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Ok, now live and also added a temporary tracking category called Category:Listing with multiple phones issue to show those listings with issues. -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:37, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Multiple Emails

Search "Passport Café & Restaurant" on Budapest/Óbuda. That restaurant has two emails. In your opinion, would better just to eliminate one of the two, or it's better to allow more than one email (same telephone numbers approach)? --Andyrom75 (talk) 12:49, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I cannot fathom any reason why we would need to list more than one email, especially for a restaurant. Maybe if they were for different, clearly-defined, mutually-exclusive purposes, and would not elicit the desired response unless you choose the right one (example: a chain hotel which has a local customer service email for each hotel but a central booking email). But that is certainly not the case here. Texugo (talk) 13:02, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

In that particular case, it would appear better to just have one as they don't seem to have separate purposes. -- WOSlinker (talk) 05:02, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Texugo, WOS, I agree that one email should be enough in this case. Now my question is, can we state that in general we should allow only one email or do we want to manage more than 1? In the first case we should include this rule in the listing manual, and maybe add a new maintainance category to look for multiple "@". --Andyrom75 (talk) 17:12, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

That I don't know. We should probably copy this conversation to a public place where more can join the conversation. But at any rate, if we are going to allow multiple emails, I think they should go in a separate field (in the markup and display, but not shown on the editing wizard). Texugo (talk) 17:24, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Texugo, let me reformulate, because I'm not sure to have understood what do you mean with separate field. Do you mean that the listing template would be able to manage store in a second parameter (e.g. example email2) the information about a second email? In the affermative case I don't like solution with "countable parameters", because at certain point someone can say "why not email3"?. I prefer solution that force to have one single email or allow "as much as necessary", in both cases managed by the same parameter (email). PS Feel free to move the discussion in a more appropriate area in order to formalize the result of the discussion. --Andyrom75 (talk) 20:02, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Andyrom75, I was more concerned with the fact that if you add more than one email to the same field, you lose the click-to-mail functionality for any but the first email (or depending on your browser, you may end up mailing all emails listed simultaneously). Someone could potentially ask 'why not a 3rd one' whether it's in its own field or not, so I don't see that as an issue (though if I can't imagine a situation where a 2nd email is desperately needed, I really really can't imagine a situation which desperately needs a 3rd one or more). But if you want to avoid numbers, it could always be called "alt-email" or something like that. I just wouldn't want it to appear in the wizard or the edit-window insertion button text, as I don't want to encourage people to add second emails in normal cases where it is not essential. And anyway, is there any concrete, non-theoretical example of a case where a second email would be essential? Texugo (talk) 20:13, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't think there is. For restaurants, additional street address fields (and lat longs) could be useful if there's e.g. one Magnificent BBQ & Sushi in the old town, another next to the railway station and a third in the suburban mall. For individual phone numbers, e-mail addresses or even fax I'd usher the reader to the company's own home page instead. ϒpsilon (talk) 20:28, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

I think we have already established that in order for multiple location to have separate icons displayed on the map, we need to continue doing those as we always have, i.e. using a head listing for the general info, and separate, indented listings under, one for each branch, in which case I don't mind having the details for each listed there. Honestly I don't think fax or email are a terribly useful thing to list for restaurants anyway though. Texugo (talk) 20:55, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm hesitant to even list one e-mail, as all we're doing by publishing these is signing the addresses up for massive amounts of spam. Any legitimate messages then get lost under the rubbish, which helps no one. We don't need two and, if there's any other online presence for a venue, shouldn't be providing e-mail at all. K7L (talk) 02:31, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you. URLs should be listed, but not emails. Anyone who has an email but no URL should probably be out of luck, although we could decide to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:35, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Texugo, thanks for moving he conversation here. The "mail to-on-click" functionality is easy to implement with more than one email, so I would't say that the constraint is technical. In my opinion 1 email should be enough even if you go on the contact web page of several hotels where you can find bunch of email addresses. Personally, when I have to write, I always use a generic one, becuase I AM the customer and I want that THEY dispatch internally my email to the most appropriate office/person. --Andyrom75 (talk) 19:20, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

We could add some detection code to the listing template to see if anythnig in the email section has more than one @, which would mean that more than one email is in the parameter and then add the page to a tracking category if anyone thinks it would help. -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:13, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

If there's a global consensus on accepting just one email, the tracking category would definitely help to clean-up this field. --Andyrom75 (talk) 06:30, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I've added a tracking category at Category:Listing with mulitple email addresses. To make it easier to find the listing within the article, you can add the code below to your own common.css page and then search for MULITPLE-EMAIL within the article. -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:32, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

.phoneinfo
{
    color: red;
    background: yellow;
    display: inline !important;
}

Listings with multiple locations

Swept in from the pub

Hi, I've been listifying stuff in various locations for a while, and there is one pattern that seems general enough to support it on the level of listing templates. That is, there are case when there are several sister pubs/bars/restaurants around the town, with the same name and same descriptions fitting all of them, but with different addresses (and directions) obviously. Sphinx in Poznań#Medium is one example I met recently, but that happens quite a bit all over the globe apparently. It would be rather convenient to have a possibility to add multiple (up to 3-5?) addresses/directions/coordinates/phones in one listing, at least for eat, drink & buy, so that they are all rendered in some standard way. AntonBryl (talk) 10:15, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

This is a problem I run into now and then myself as well. Don't tout prohibits adding multiple location for businesses, and I assume it concerns not only marketers but everyone. I usually list one restaurant (or whatever), and mention in its description that they also have another restaurant and where it is. ϒpsilon (talk) 13:39, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

One listing is one object and one point on the map, so putting several addresses into one listing is counter-productive. You can easily make a nice format by using * {{listing}} for the general description, followed by a series of ** {{listing}} for individual locations. Ideally, they should be connected to each other by a dummy parameter (something like |ref= ?) that can be used for attributing each object to its relevant description. However, we are still far from processing and re-using any of the listing content, so the attribution problem is not so important... --Alexander (talk) 14:58, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

The second half of Wikivoyage:Listings#Complex attractions contains some guidance for places with multiple listings, although the use case of multiple locations of the same place could probably be called out into its own specific example. See "Harold's Chicken Shack" in Chicago/Bronzeville#Eat for usage in a real article. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:27, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies everyone! AntonBryl (talk) 16:19, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia links for listings

There was a discussion about adding Wikipedia links for listings at the beginning of 2013 which ended up in nothing happening on it.

I've got a new proposal which is slightly different, which is to all links to Wikipedia articles for see & do listings but have then hidden by default and have a gadget in preferences which a reader can enable if they wish to make the extra Wikipedia links visible.

This would allow those who don't want the articles cluttered up with Wikipedia links to be happy and also people who would like the Wikipeida links so that they can see some more in-depth information on the attractions (not directly related to visting it) to be happy as well. Any thoughts from anyone? -- WOSlinker (talk) 08:17, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Support from me. Links to the corresponding Wikipedia article would make Wikivoyage listings more useful to me for reasons argued extensively in the previous discussion that you linked to, and I remain of the opinion that fears of people substituting Wikipedia links for listing content are unfounded. -- Ryan • (talk) • 14:26, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Support. Other Wikivoyage languages (such as fr:) have long been linking WP from individual listings without incident, not sure why this deadlocked here as there is often encyclopaedic detail (such as an entire WP page on one museum) which is useful but too large to include inline as more than a brief summary. The listings editor also needs to change, as a long-known bug is causing it to surreptitiously remove any fields it does not recognise from a pre-configured list. K7L (talk) 14:55, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Quit it with the "support", please; we don't take votes here. All this proposal does is hide things, which is a bad habit to get into. When some things are hidden from some users of the site, it makes it harder to detect and fix problems. Powers ^(talk) 18:53, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to look at progressing this over the next few weeks, with a trial run on one or two articles. And then there will be something to evaluate and comment on. -- WOSlinker (talk) 11:31, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't support this idea. Including links but hiding them is a very bad compromise, in my opinion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:08, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I do support the idea. I too think it's a less than ideal compromise, but at least it's far better than the non-compromising flat "no" we've had so far, and the -in my eyes- glaring omission of one of our greatest potential advantages over other travel guides. It's my hope that as people can experience the benefits, they will become less fearful of including the relevant links. Hopefully in the future we can then change it the other way around: have the links there standard, but allow people to turn them "off" if they still really don't like them. A trial run sounds excellent. JuliasTravels (talk) 12:36, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I tend to think this is worse than either accepting visible links or rejecting links, but I'll look at how the mockup functions, when it's up. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:41, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. Just as a general principle, presenting significantly different content to one group of editors versus another is logistically problematic on any collaboratively edited product. Powers ^(talk) 15:39, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

One general question that remains to be answered is whether these links will always direct readers to English Wikipedia or to Wikipedia in the local language that will likely have more information on the subject (and in many cases there will be no article in English Wikipedia at all). --Alexander (talk) 19:25, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

For me - and without any doubt - the answer would be always to the English Wikipedia. Chances of a visitor happening to be able to also understand the language of the Wikipedia that happens to have the most elaborate article are far too tiny. The vast majority of e.g. US based visitors speak no other language at all, and probably the most common second language in the world is English. For the vast majority of our average readers a link to an article in Chinese, Hebrew or even French would be useless. JuliasTravels (talk) 21:10, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I think we can leave this up to the judgement of individual editors (who are likely to be knowledgeable about the articles they are editing) rather than have it cast in stone. Most links are likely to be to EngWP in practice. This compromise gets my approval as more helpful to travellers than forbidding any links at all - we need to discuss how this feature (and others, like setting thumbnail sizes) are better publicised, though... --103.9.41.192 21:14, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

No, no, no. There is no way we redirect users to an entirely different language, especially without warning. Powers ^(talk) 21:44, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I can't believe that you never used Google Translate, and if you have not, you probably never traveled outside English-speaking countries. And why do we link to websites of hotels and museums even when they are not in English?

The reality is that individual attractions outside US and a few other countries will typically have full articles only in the local language, while English Wikipedia will offer 2-3 lines in the city article (at best). In fact, the most flexible solution is to use Wikidata items, which can then provide links to any language depending on reader's choice. Unfortunately, Wikidata is not quite ready to give us this functionality yet. --Alexander (talk) 22:54, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

The links should always be to the English Wikipedia articles. From there is is then possible to go to the other language versions. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:37, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Imagine that there is no article in English Wikipedia, but there is an article in the local language. What then?

It my sound like a rare case, but it's not. In Russian Wikivoyage, we already have a lot of experience in linking individual listings to Wikidata items. Leaving Russia aside (obviously, there is very little information in English), all countries that I had to deal with recently (Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Georgia, Armenia, Czech Republic, to name a few) had very few articles in English Wikipedia. And well, you can do pretty well with the Czech language, but finding something in Armenian Wikipedia is very-very difficult. So the link of this kind will be in fact most valuable for the interested traveler who is looking for additional information that is not easy to find. --Alexander (talk) 22:54, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Here's an example of how it might work from the sandbox (I've left it visible at the moment, so that it's easier to see how it will work, but would hide it before making it live). Where is the best place to put the link in the listing and should it be a W icon or something else? -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:46, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

• 1 Tate Britain, Millbank (Nearest tube: Pimlico). M-Su 10:00-17:50. This gallery houses the Tate collection of British art. Free. 
• Template:Marker/sandbox, Millbank (Nearest tube: Pimlico). M-Su 10:00-17:50. This gallery houses the Tate collection of British art. Free.  

Put it at the end of the listing, so it serves as "you've read our content, now you can see WP for additional info". We don't want to invite readers to go to WP before they've even read our content. And this is the English WV, so link only to the English WP, for now at least. Let's start conservatively - we can always discuss expanding it to non-English WPs later. Nurg (talk) 09:13, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Edit listing dialogue box could be better

Swept in from the pub

• The alignment of "alt" is not nice. And "alt" should start with a capital.
• Fax is missing
• You do not get it in Mobile modus --FredTC (talk) 05:38, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

--FredTC (talk) 08:01, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

I've capitalised the "A". My "Alt" aligns fine. What browser are you using? Nurg (talk) 09:03, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

I use IE11, and I see only the capital A as change. --FredTC (talk) 09:27, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the alignment is a problem in IE11. It is fine in Firefox and Chrome. I can see two possible causes. One is that IE11 renders all the edit boxes with a smaller height - maybe the font has a smaller height and causes this. The other is that the arrow head in the "Type" box is much bigger in IE11 than the other browsers. One or other or a combination of both means that there is not enough room for the Alt box to fit below the Type box, so the Alt box is pushed to the right. The "Alt" label, being of less height than its box, can fit under the Type box. Maybe an expert needs to modify MediaWiki:Gadget-ListingEditor.js. Someone like User:Torty3, who created it. Nurg (talk) 22:18, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Since we can have an image in the template - do you want to put an Image: field in as well??? Matroc (talk) 05:33, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I think that should be there as well. However if you use one of the listing buttons in the edit screen, the code genereated does not include it, that is why I did not notice that one. There is an additional problem: you do not get the dialogue in mobile modus, and to my opinion that is the situation where you need it the most. --FredTC (talk) 08:37, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I do not think there should be an image field, as in the case of eat/drink/sleep listings, it will appear to encourage people to add pictures of the Super 8 motel, the Howard Johnson, the T.G.I. Friday's, and so on, all of which are explicitly against our image policy. Texugo (talk) 12:12, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

As far as I know, the image isn't actually displayed in the article - it just appears if the numbered icon on the map is clicked. That creates somewhat of a grey area which our policy was never designed to address - an image which might not be worth thumbnailing inline may still be suitable for the map icon click... or not. I doubt we want a link to national hotel, hire car or hamburger chain logos but some which are marginal (local photo of an individual museum, tour boat, attraction) might get the map icon click and not the inline thumb image on the page itself.

"Fax" is another matter... it's obsolete technology based on dial-up modems and really bad black-and-white (no greyscale, 100x200dpi TIFF) scanned document images, but it somehow refuses to die. I have no idea why - my workplace pulled the plug on it years ago as mostly receiver-paid hardcopy of unsolicited advertising gets sent and it does not play nicely with Internet telephony - but enough travel venues are still listing it that its absence from the listing editor is anomolous.

I usually avoid using the listing editor as it has a sneaky tendency to outright remove any fields in the existing listing which aren't on its internal list, clandestinely and silently. This is a bug which was reported long ago, no idea if anything is being done to fix it. K7L (talk) 19:18, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I have no strong opinion about fax listings, but they just might be useful somewhere, so I see no important reason to delete them. In terms of images in listings, K7L explains the situation exactly. I have no problem with them whatsoever, including in the cases of nationwide or international chains. They're solely for the convenience of map-readers. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:07, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Chain logos would make these businesses stand out and also make them look like the normal alternative. I think we should not do that kind of advertising. --LPfi (talk) 07:14, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

listing and geo coordinates

Swept in from the pub

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 72559

We appear to be having some syntax update errors with coordinates on any recently saved pages.--Traveler100 (talk) 14:57, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

See the relevant thread on meta. --Andyrom75 (talk) 15:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Traveler100, the problem is on each page not just in the recently saved. The one that looks fine is just because of the cache memory. When you purge it (or look them in preview) they turn bad. --Andyrom75 (talk) 15:12, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Hmm: listing templates seem to be broken, but {{Template:Marker}} displays fine. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:19, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

The problem is on #coordinates not in the listing template itself. Marker does not use #coordinates. --Andyrom75 (talk) 15:23, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Promotional Question

I've tried reading/understanding this long talk page and didn't see anyone talking about my question, so here it goes... I've been told on my talk page that photos of restaurants are promotional. Can someone explain the reasoning behind the eat and even the stay templates? To me, those are promotional. By having a restaurant listed in the eat template, is it not being promotional? The restaurants not listed in the eat templates are therefore not being promoted. Same with the hotels. So, we are allowed to promote restaurants/hotels/etc by putting them in these eat/stay/etc templates but not have photos of them because photos are considered promotional? --Mjrmtg (talk) 22:00, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure I understand your question, but see Wikivoyage:Listings#Avoid using images for the guidance on the subject. We're building a travel guide, so having listings for hotels and restaurants is a necessity in order to provide travelers with information they need to plan a trip to a location. A picture of each and every business in the town (or even just a select few) is not a necessity, and when the issue has arisen in the past the consensus has been to use the space available for images for photos that illustrate things that will be of interest to a traveler and that are iconic to the area, and not waste space by putting up a picture of a generic Holiday Inn. You are welcome to propose a change to that guidance, but I suspect there will not be much support for filling our articles with images of generic businesses. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:11, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. --Mjrmtg (talk) 12:49, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Are listing templates a problem on mobile phones?

Swept in from the pub

Please have a look at this conversation and this article history. If the listing templates make it difficult to edit from some mobile phones, what kind of workaround could be done? Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:53, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I find any kind of template editing a pain on mobile. Especially in this project. When you are travelling time is scarce and templates slow things down. The keyboard is optimised for plain text. Curly braces on android are found by clicking the 123 button then the = sign. Same for the '=' symbol - so that's three clicks away. So using a template for listing anything becomes a more painful experience. I'm a pretty advanced user so I can do it - it is just a pain but I worry various users just won't be able to find the right buttons and risk deletion. I worry at the risk of presentation we might be losing drive by editors/putting off editors. It might be worth running some user tests on the wikivoyage project to understand whether this is really a problem rather than go on my assumption. E.g. ask a sample of random people to add a restaurant to the page. Maybe User:ARipstra (WMF) might be able to help with that. In my particular situation I was worried if I didn't use the template i would be a nuisance and it seems when I did (with missing fields) apparently that also risks reversion. Jdlrobson (talk)

One has to customize listing template(s) for the Visual Editor. Then you should choose simple "Edit" (not "Edit as wiki-text") in the settings menu of the editor window in the mobile version. Separate fields for each parameter will appear, and you won't have to type curly brackets or '=' symbols any more. --Alexander (talk) 15:47, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Currently on my phone using the mobile view I'm not seeing the "add/edit" listing links. Have other language versions solved that problem? If not, and if no one beats me to it, I can take a look at the problem in the next couple of days. On a related question, does anyone else find the regular (non-mobile) listing editor to be a bit small? Currently the font size is configred for 90% of normal, so at a minimum I'd suggest bumping that up so the font size is at least the same size as the rest of the site. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:08, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I believe that if you're opted into beta features on the regular mobile website (not the separate mobile app), then you can switch to a limited version of VisualEditor. Look for a gear-shaped settings icon on the upper right, and choose "Edit" instead of "Edit source". I used the mobile site to make this minor edit to a template (in Firefox on my Mac, even though it says that it's a mobile edit). I didn't see any way to insert a new template, though. It might be possible to copy and paste an existing one, and then edit its contents.

User:Maryana (WMF) is the product manager for the mobile website, and she was in Nigeria back in December. I wonder if she has tried editing Wikivoyage from any of her mobile devices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:01, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Shouldn't using the listings buttons on the editing toolbar obviate the need to type curly braces? Powers ^(talk) 15:58, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. That's a rather convenient/cross-platform/safe way to add listings. Maybe some editors don't know about this button? Personally I have only recently started using the buttons, I would always copy/paste or rewrite as I am always a bit reluctant to use non-essential JavaScript gadgets. Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:11, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

So far as I can tell from reading mw:Extension:Gadgets, to enable the listing editor for phones and other mobile devices we would need to update MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition and change the "ListingEditor" line to include targets=desktop,mobile, for example:

ListingEditor[ResourceLoader | default | dependencies=mediawiki.util,jquery.ui.dialog | targets=desktop,mobile] | ListingEditor.js | ListingEditor.css

To make the listing editor text the same size as the rest of the site, we would just need to remove the font-size: 0.9em from the #listing-editor style in MediaWiki:Gadget-ListingEditor.css.

Enabling the listing editor seems like it could greatly improve mobile usability, assuming that the JS works on most modern phones. Having a slightly larger listing editor box should assist everyone, mobile and non-mobile. Anyone care if I give those two changes a try? The changes can be easily reverted if there are any problems. -- Ryan • (talk) • 07:46, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I increased the font size in the listing editor, but enabling the listing editor for mobile generated a dependency error on jquery.ui.dialog, so I had to revert that change. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:09, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Since you decided not to use internationally acceptable 3 letter symbols like NOK and SEK you need to add all the weird currency symbols you did decide to use instead (like Kč ₭ ₦ ₱ ₸ ₩ ¥ zł лв РСД ₪ and ₹) in the listings editor window! —The preceding comment was added by 148.122.187.2 (talk • contribs)

List of articles containing non-templatified POIs

Swept in from the pub

New: This page is a list of articles with POIs that do not use the template format.

There is probably a number of false positives, and some places might better be left as prose.

Nonetheless, your help templating all of the obvious ones would be very appreciated, as listing templates are much more expressive and reusable than prose. Thanks a lot! Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:04, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

For anyone interested in this type of cleanup, I've updated the custom auto wiki browser settings so that AWB can be used to automatically convert text listings to templated listings. It definitely generates false positives that need to be manually corrected, but can save a significant amount of time when performing this fairly mundane task. -- Ryan • (talk) • 07:11, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Nice! I guess the ideal is to use my list and your AWB settings in combination :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:31, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

"Last edited" date for listings

Swept in from the pub

In trying to use Wikivoyage guides on a three month trip last year, one of my frustrations was that listings were often hugely out-of-date, but there was no way to know if a listing was added to an article one week ago or ten years ago. I wrote an essay with some suggested fixes, one of which was to add a "last edited" date to listings that would display as follows:

• El Rancho Hotel & Motel, 1000 E. Highway 66, ☎ +1 505 863-9311. This historic Route 66 motel has been the site of numerous film productions over the years, and today offers an upscale lodging and dining option for travelers. Blah blah blah... (last updated 04-Oct-2013 | )

There has been some discussion on this idea already, and it seems like there might be interest in having this feature available subject to the following constraints:

1. We would add a new field named "lastedit" to Template:Listing that can be used to indicate when a listing was last updated. The input format for this field will probably be something like "lastedit=2015-01-15", and the output will then be "15-Jan-2015" (generated by adding {{#time: d-M-Y|{{{lastedit}}}}} to the listing template).
2. The listing editor will be updated to automatically populate this field whenever a listing is added or updated ({{#time: Y-m-d}}). People who prefer to edit wiki syntax directly would also be able to add/update this field by hand.
3. "last edited" would only be displayed in listings when there was a non-empty value present, so this would have no effect on existing listings until those listings are updated.
4. A category will probably need to be created to track listings with invalid dates, similar to what we do already with issues like Category:Listing with phone format issue.

I think this would be a very useful addition for users of our guides, and there has been some support for the idea expressed already, but since it's a change that would affect most of the articles on the site it obviously needs wider discussion. Concerns raised so far include the issues that displaying this field might make some of our guides look more out of date than they actually are in cases where places don't change much, and that it might look cluttered for listings that are just name + address. Advantages (beyond giving readers an indication of listing freshness) include an indication for editors that listing data needs to be checked for accuracy when the "last edited" date is far in the past. Suggestions, comments, support, or opposition? -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:13, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I very much support this idea. Making sure that listings are kept up to date or their outdatedness is visible to the traveller. Remember: the traveller comes first. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:44, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

The idea is good but as you say too many would have dates that have not change for a long time but are still valid. How about just doing for listings with no web page and also highlighting listing with web links that are giving error such as page not found. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:49, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't support that limitation. If a hotel was updated 7 years ago, even if the address, telephone number, URL and description are still valid, the rates would have changed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:07, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I see two weak points of this proposal. First, standard edits that are done without the listing editor will not generate the date. Second, an arbitrary edit of a listing does not mean that all information in this listing has been updated and checked. One should probably try the automatic implementation and see how it works, yet we could keep in mind the simple and straightforward alternative of adding the date (year) manually after the price, because prices are most likely to change from year to year. This will guarantee that dates are added consciously. --Alexander (talk) 19:17, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

If we institute this proposal, I think it should be allowed for editors to update the "last edited" date upon verifying that existing information remains true, regardless of whether or not any change has occurred since it was written. That might be an answer for those who are concerned about how many outdated listings readers might encounter in a given article. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:51, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Basically I think this is a very good idea and with the smaller text for the date as in Ryan's example, it doesn't really look cluttery to me. Sure, it might look a bit awkward with a bunch of several years old listings, but again this should be a signal for the reader that here's an opportunity to do a valuable contribution. We're a wiki and everyone (new and old users) can check up information, and update and fix things! We could perhaps also have a maintenance category for listings that haven't been edited in say 3, 4 or 5 years.

The problems would be those which Alexander just presented — that the date wouldn't be updated when not using the listing editor (for instance, I very seldom use it) and that the listing would be timestamped also when someone is just e.g. copyediting it. ϒpsilon (talk) 20:25, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

The timestamp can also be updated manually, not just through the listing editor. (Sure, not everyone is going to do this when manually editing, but if you update a listing then you are taking some responsibility for its quality)

I would actually really like to see this new attribute added to the listing template. It does not have to be visible on the rendered article page for now, but why not try and capture this important piece of data if we can? Andrewssi2 (talk) 21:04, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I think we should give this a try. I also agree with Andre’s point above about allowing editors to update the “last edited” date if they’ve verified the info is correct but nothing has changed. I think part of what Ryan is getting at is a reader doesn’t know if the listing is still accurate — so if someone makes the effort to verify the info, the listing should reflect this otherwise the reader won’t know it’s been recently verified. -Shaundd (talk) 00:09, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

In the same spirit as the "Closed?" checkbox that people can easily use to report a closed restaurant, how about a button that anyone can click to indicate that they've just been at this restaurant and found the listing info to be correct? Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:28, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Responding to several comments above, I agree that the fact that using the listing editor for a simple copyedit will trigger the "last updated" date to update is a problem, but I think capturing this information is still an improvement over the status quo, and it's something we might be able to mitigate in the future by providing a "minor edit" checkbox in the listing editor, or perhaps only updating the "last updated" date when substantial updates are made (I think that's out of scope for the initial version, however - first let's just try to get something implemented and functional, and see how it goes). Regarding comments about updates made directly via editing the wiki syntax, it's straightforward enough to add or update a "lastedit=2015-02-15" field to a listing by hand, and since it's mainly experienced editors that are updating listings by hand then I suspect that's a step that many editors would start using. Finally, to Andre's point about just updating the date for listings that are still up-to-date even if the existing data hasn't changed, we can definitely make it clear in the documentation that updating the "lastedit" date as a way to show that the information was verified accurate is acceptable. -- Ryan • (talk) • 07:52, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the date of the last edit is a valuable information, and should be recorded, as well as presented (also including the risk that changes were just cosmetical). I like the form suggested above. Regarding editing without the listing editor, maybe a little date stamp icon could be added to the vw editor, that would generate the date code with today's date. Danapit (talk) 08:11, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I think this is worth trying, and if we hate it later, we can always revert it. Overall I like the proposed look and functionality.

Ryan, this might be more complexity than you want (especially for the first version), but to reduce visual clutter, could the date be shortened to just the year, at least for older listings? If the answer is "2008", then the exact date doesn't matter much. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I am in favour of recording the date that a listing was edited using the listing editor, but I think that we may need to think a bit more about how it is displayed. To readers who are familiar with our site an update 10 months ago may look recent, but those who are more used to other sites may think that 10 weeks ago is stale. Also different travel information ages at different rates - a listing of a public park or statue from 50 years ago could still be accurate, but often half the places to eat have changed after 5 years. AlasdairW (talk) 23:23, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Instead of displaying the exact date (which is too much information), how about just displaying "updated 3 years ago" or "updated 2 weeks ago"? JavaScript time humanization libraries are tiny and widely available. I believe we should be very liberal when truncating, better display "1 year ago" or "2 years ago" than "1 year and a half ago", because the half does not bring much value and make the text longer. Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:17, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

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If I'm reading the above discussion correctly it sounds like there is support for this idea, although some further refinement will need to be pursued, including Nicolas1981's idea about displaying descriptive text ("updated 1 week ago") instead of a date, and the issues raised about minor copyedits causing the "last updated" date to make a listing look more accurate than it might actually be. LtPowers also raised a concern about articles potentially looking cluttered, but indicated he would need to see more examples to make a final judgement. Assuming there is general agreement for moving forward with a test I should be able to put an implementation together this weekend, which would then allow us to move on to discussing changes to the initial implementation. As WhatamIdoing notes, if people dislike the feature once it is in action then a simple template change will make it is easy to switch off. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:32, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The changes are now live. Feedback appreciated, particularly if anything seems to have broken. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:45, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Amazing. Looks good to me. For the record. I've no opposition implenting it. --Saqib (talk) 06:58, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Great! Just tested it... :) Danapit (talk) 13:00, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Would it be difficult (or unclean) to include a checkbox for (not) changing update date? This would partly solve the copyedits changing update date issue. I am not sure what wording should be used, though. --LPfi (talk) 13:48, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

If this proves to be something worthwhile, I would highly suggest that we incorporate some sort of verification timeline into our Star article status requirements for star articles to remain stars, for example verifying listings every 3 years or risk losing status (or at least get tagged as potentially outdated). Having these dates will make it easy for us to keep our stars in check and most importantly, ensure that they're still star-worthy. Otherwise, our stars become articles that LOOK nice at first glance but are in fact riddled with problems. As a sidenote, I hate that the first thing I see in the mobile version at the top of articles is when it was last updated. Very unattractive and leads to the false impression that everything is outdated. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Next steps

There are a few enhancements that have been suggested related to the "last edited" change:

1. Do not automatically update the "last edited" date from the listing editor for minor edits - suggested by several people.
2. Instead of "last updated on 21-Feb-2014" display as "last updated 1 year ago" (possible ranges would be "last updated today", "last updated 1-6 days ago", "last updated 1-4 weeks ago", "last updated 1-11 months ago", and "last updated 1-infinity years ago") - suggested by Nicolas1981.
3. Include a shortcut in the editing toolbar to insert a valid "last edited" date when editing listings by changing the listing template syntax directly - suggested by Danapit.
4. Various policy updates for use of this field, including changes to star article criteria, etc - suggested by several people.

Of these four, #1 seems to be the one that generated the most discussion above, so what about adding a "minor edit" checkbox to the listing editor that, if checked, would flag the edit as a minor edit and not update the "last edit" date? The tip for this box in the editor UI could note that it should be checked in cases where an edit is just fixing typos or make other changes that do not reflect the current status of the business/attraction. As to items #2-4 (and anything else people want to see), further discussion is probably needed to ensure that people have had a chance to weigh in. Are there other changes/enhancements that people would like to see? -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:23, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not going to suggest anything since I don't have any opinion but for the record its important to endorse worthwhile stuff. So here I support #1. We need minor edit check box and I will go with "last updated 1 year ago". Having icon in editing toolbox is also good idea and yes I liked the proposal of User:ChubbyWimbus that we need such a verification mechanism for star guides to make sure they remain up to date. I hope such a mechanism is not difficult to implement for Ryan. BTW, I hope people may not misuse this system and false update each and every listing. --Saqib (talk) 17:59, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I can endorse #1 and #3 and agree with the need for further discussion on #4. For #2, I feel strongly that we should go even further - if this is going to be repeated a gajillion times across the site, it needs to be as absolutely short as possible, so I'd also drop "last" and the whole "ago" thing and go with simple three-letter month abbreviations plus year:

• Spam Heaven, ☏ +1 (972) 555-5555. Cozy restaurant where everything is made of Spam, including the napkins. Try the house Spam martini! (updated Jan/2015 |) 
• Bob's Butt Bar, ☏ +1 (806) 555-1234. Butt-themed bar and grill. The patio has a panoramic view of Buttville municipal landfill. (updated Jul/2018 |) 

Something like that. Texugo (talk) 13:40, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about this proposal for a minor-edit checkbox for the listing editor. Certainly those of us who use the MediaWiki platform regularly are familiar with the concept of "minor edits", but what about inexperienced users? I think it's just as likely that newbies won't bother to check the minor-edit box - either because they don't notice it, don't realize why it's important, or don't feel confident enough to make the judgment call of whether or not their edit is minor - and we'll end up not really being any closer to answering the question of which listings were updated recently enough to be accurate.

What we need to do is first decide - assuming it can never be made 100% accurate - whether it's more desirable to have some listings that are accurate display as if they hadn't been updated in a long time, or the reverse; to have some old listings display as if they were newly updated just because of a minor copyedit. If we decide the former, then maybe the "last edited" feature should be opt-in rather than opt-out, and the checkbox should be for edits that do update the "last edited" date.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:36, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

What about instead of a "minor edit" checkbox, having a "Verified Current Info" checkbox that is unchecked by default and included only for updates (adding a new listing would still automatically set the "last edit" date to the current date). If that box was not explicitly checked then the "last edit" date would not update. That should address the concern about the "last edit" date being an opt-in field and would ensure that the date would only update when a user explicitly stated that the info was current in order to trigger an update. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:46, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, "Verified current info" definitely sounds more informative (to a new user) than "minor edit". I prefer Texugo's version of how to write the date rather than "xx-yy days or months ago". ϒpsilon (talk) 16:05, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I also support "Verified current info". Texugo (talk) 17:21, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

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There seems to be support for moving forward with a "Verified current info" checkbox in the listing editor as outlined above - does that seem like a correct interpretation of this discussion? Also, how about changing the "last updated" text to be shorter per Texugo? Rather than "updated Jan/2015", I would suggest that we use "updated Jan-2015", which I think is a more standard date format. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:08, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good. Will there be some regex to enforce the format? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:36, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Category:Pages with parser function time errors will now capture any pages that have an invalid #time entry. I'm not sure how we could use a regex for validation - the listing editor adds or updates the timestamp automatically, so someone using the listing editor would be unable to enter an invalid value, and for people who edit wiki syntax directly we don't currently perform any validation on the input aside from executing the spam blacklist and the abuse filter. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:00, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Slash or hyphen, makes no difference to me. Your version is fine, Ryan. Texugo (talk) 02:16, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I think either seems redundant, in Swedish I'd use a space. Would "Jan 2015" be wrong in English? --LPfi (talk) 09:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I've updated Template:Listing to now use the shorter "updated Feb 2015" instead of "last updated 23-Feb-2015". -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:06, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Does it need to show an update when someone simply copy edits the listing? I guess there's no way to filter for that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:41, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Ikan Kekek , do you typically copy edit with the listing editor (dialog box) ? I personally do not, although other editors might do it this way... Andrewssi2 (talk) 21:52, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

No, I edit the article or a section, but I think I've noticed that whenever I copy edit a listing, it shows up as updated. Maybe I'm misreading it, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:05, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

The "last update" date only changes if the listing's "lastedit" value is changed. The listing editor updates that automatically (see point #1 above for a proposed change), and the skeleton listing templates created by the buttons in the edit bar will also populate that value in the new listing skeleton, but the only other way to change it when modifying a listing is to explicitly change the value. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:21, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Just to say that I quite like the implementation. The last updated date is visually understated (in a positive way), yet accessible enough that someone can easily find it if interested. Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:00, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikileaks: Italian Wikivoyage community possibly going to implement the same mechanism but they're considering to display "last edit" next to price field instead of at the end of listing. --Saqib (talk) 14:31, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not about to go there and attempt to join that discussion, but if I were, I'd point out that the price is not the only, nor necessarily the most important, thing to be updated. Texugo (talk) 17:16, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

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Per point #1 above I've added a "Verified information up-to-date?" checkbox to the listing editor. The "last updated" date now updates as follows:

1. Adding a new listing using the listing editor automatically adds the current date as the "last updated" date; no action is necessary by the user.
2. Editing a listing using the listing editor will now show a "Verified information up-to-date?" checkbox. The "last updated" date is now only updated when editing an existing listing if that box is checked.

Feedback and suggestions appreciated. -- Ryan • (talk) • 07:08, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Policy on listing a hotel that is opening soon

Swept in from the pub

I was wondering what the policy is for listing hotels that are opening soon. Would the community prefer the listing only be added after people can stay in the rooms or would the fact they are taking reservations for when they do open be enough to say they are open? VerbInteractive (talk) 13:05, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure if WV has a policy for that. However this discussion has some good points. Personally I would rather not add a hotel or other business that hasn't opened yet. ϒpsilon (talk) 14:08, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I would think that when they start accepting reservations would be the ideal time to start listing (but never before). If they're accepting reservations it means that they can be contacted, and that readers could therefore use the information in planning their trip. Texugo (talk) 15:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I have been operating on the assumption that hotels shouldn't be listed until they're open, because until they open, no guest can describe them, and therefore, we are left with only the say-so of the hotel itself and people associated with it - and even, as in this case, when the person wanting to post the listing has an unimpeachable record of operating in good faith, there is no possibility of a check on the claims he'll post until the first guest actually stays in the hotel. What do you all think of this reasoning? I can see two counter-arguments: (1) It risks being unnecessarily unfriendly to business owners wanting to list their hotels; (2) listing a significant hotel when it's not yet open but is accepting reservations is a service to the traveller. We should make a clear decision on this, because it will come up again in the future. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:15, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, some reasonable points. I suppose I'd be reluctant to list "Pousada ABC" or "Joe's B&B" or "23rd Family Owned Hotel in Town" before having someone go stay there and check it out, but I'd find it counterproductive to prohibit listing a new Holiday Inn/Ibis/Four Seasons or other chain that tends to have widely established and recognized quality standards, especially in a destination which doesn't have many options in the given class, or doesn't have many options, period. Texugo (talk) 17:52, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

So how would we formulate a policy around that? How would it be worded? "Unless a hotel is part of an established chain with a clear track record of quality control, do not list it until the first guest has stayed there"? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:08, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of avoiding listing businesses that aren't yet operating. In addition to the reasons Ikan cited, opening dates are often delayed, and these sorts of listings are almost always added by the business owner and thus will probably not reflect the opinions of travelers. I'm not sure that I would advocate for an outright prohibition on such listings, but a guideline such as "unless there is a specific reason for doing so, if a business has not yet opened it is best to wait to add it to a Wikivoyage article until it is actually operating" would make sense to me. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:21, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that form of words is problematic if we decide to make listings of not-yet-opened hotels exceptional, because an easy rejoinder is that facilitating reservations for travelers is a "specific reason." Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:21, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia makes a distinction between policies (this is how things should be) vs. guidelines (this is best practice). In this case I think a guideline is sufficient - while I don't think we want to encourage listings for businesses that aren't yet open, I also don't think we should revert someone who adds a single listing for a restaurant that they're excited about but that isn't opening for a couple of weeks. It's not a matter that I think we need to be too concerned about, but in specific instances where someone disagrees with an addition, putting a guideline in place would provide justification for addressing the situation. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:37, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I would also find an exception that proposed guideline necessary for Walt Disney World resort hotels. Powers ^(talk) 00:40, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I wonder if a "use your judgement" rule might be better than a simple yes/no rule. It might be helpful to identify factors for consideration, such as:

• How soon it will open (next week is good, two years from now is bad)
• Whether it's possible to predict the quality (reputable chains are good, inexperienced owners are bad)
• Availability of alternatives (if it's one of two hotels in a remote area, then list it; if it's one of thousands in a large city, then don't)

Do you think that would that be helpful, without being too prescriptive? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Do we have examples of businesses being added too early and causing a problem? Have there been many cases like this? Just wondering how big the problem has been so far. Nurg (talk) 02:52, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

The usual problem is businesses adding themselves in some sort of self-serving manner. This is true both for new and existing businesses. That said, there are occasionally times when a venue under construction is worth a mention. An attempt to rebuild a previously-existing venue after a disaster (such as the Musi-Café in Lac-Mégantic) may be notable, the flurry of construction which precedes world-level events like an Olympic Games or FIFA World Cup usually transforms the host community in some manner which affects the traveller, the construction of a 100+ room waterfront hotel in some tiny Clayton (New York)#Sleep (pop 2300) sized village without an existing large hotel changes the character of the village enough to be worth a mention. Usually, if it's noteworthy, there's information somewhere other than from the venue's proprietor (for instance, the project is large enough to be covered by local media as hard news). K7L (talk) 22:47, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't see a need for a policy. Nurg (talk) 09:21, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Find around you what listings are missing pictures

Swept in from the pub

Hi all,

You have already taken pictures of all of the interesting sights in the city you're in right now? Then why not take pictures for all individual listings? :-)

It is rather low-priority, but if you have time, taking pictures of sights/restaurants/etc is a fun way to have a walk while doing something useful.

I created a Google Earth file containing all listings that don't have an image yet. Download it and open it (Google Earth will open) on your smartphone for an easy way to find them while walking around. Screenshot Just go there, take a picture of the facade of the place or an representative detail, then upload it to Wikimedia Commons, and link it from the listing with image=.

These images are currently used in dynamic maps (when you click on a pin), and in the future they will probably be used by more mashups and Wikivoyage mobile apps :-) Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 10:05, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

What a good idea. Antiv31 (talk) 10:08, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Even when you're not around, Flickr also holds a wealth of pictures with appropriate licenses - be sure to select both modifiable and available for commercial use, you may also want to sort by "interesting" rather than "relevant" and be creative with search keywords. PrinceGloria (talk) 06:45, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Listing individual apartments as "sleep"

I have just had a brief discussion with User:Traveler100 who made me aware that we apparently do not disallow those, while I understood it we did all of the time as it seemed only natural. Individual apartments are numerous and ephemeric, as now with the advent of airBnB everybody can have a Ferienwohnung, even if they're away only for some time.

The probability of more readers using/considering the same hostel/hotel/b&b/camping site are reasonable and collecting information and words of advice, as well as plotting locations on the map make sense. For individual apartments, opening the floodgates means potentially hundreds of listings in a guide to a popular place (even one we consider not that popular). Just check airBnB for the amount of POTENTIALLY AVAILABLE locations just about everywhere - and guys who own them are there for the money.

E.g. I have a friend who rents her apartment for all weekends (and crashes onto her mother's couch for the night) due to intermittent financial woes in an expensive city. She will probably stop doing that the moment she gets back on her feet, but for now she is dying to advertise it around - and she is not the only one. In a few weeks, her listing might be outdated if she created it, but probably nobody will bother to check or remove. This way, we will start collecting residue that will encourage even more and more of it, and many users will probably also discover our dynamic maps feature, rendering our maps unreadable and pushing the numbers of "sleep" indicators over 100 per district.

I believe we should strictly ban apartment rentals unless it is a professional property (aparthotel or another establishment with multiple apartment with the sole purpose of short-term rental) with more chances of sustained functioning. PrinceGloria (talk) 06:04, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Isn't this already covered under our rental listings policy? PerryPlanet (talk) 06:25, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I can understand the concern about being flooded by temporary rental accommodation but would not want to discourage holiday home listings that are not agency pages. Having used holiday rental cottages in rural areas in Wales, Montana, Alberta, Rügen and Black Forest I would not want to ignore this excellent method of accommodation. Yes it does need a little patrolling, I know as I am spending some considerable effort at the moment cleaning up villages and town in Wales. We need to make sure offers to not get over enthusiastic but I do not think we should not allow. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:16, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

User:PerryPlanet, I did think so myself, but Traveler100 pointed out that it does not expressly cover those. For places where local rentals are the only or prevalent reasonable option, I believe we should make exceptions, but otherwise we can simply advise the reader to look for those online, I am quite sure Google will handily offer suggestions. PrinceGloria (talk) 07:27, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, Wikivoyage open in one tab and Airbnb in another is really fine and how people should effectively use the web. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 08:51, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Policy as I read it requires consensus on a location-by-location basis before including any rental listings. I don't see any reason AirBnB listings and the like wouldn't be included therein. Powers ^(talk) 23:03, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Seems like slippery slope to me. We shouldn't repeat AirBnb listings since the owner is unlikely to make any updates to WV, although exceptions for remote locations (such as a fishing village with almost no accommodation options) could be made. Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:12, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

But the very fact that we require consensus on a location-by-location basis means that there's already an uphill battle for any rental listings to get on Wikivoyage in the vast majority of cases, which I think would serve to stem any potential flood of unwanted rental listings. Honestly, I just don't see this as an imminent danger we need to guard ourselves from any more than we already do. PerryPlanet (talk) 00:31, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

OK so the consensus is that if I see somebody putting in an individual apartment listing, I can delete it and refer the poster to the talk page to discuss possible inclusion of individual listings for this particular guide, right? Can we put it in more straightforward wording on the flip page of this? PrinceGloria (talk) 05:13, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Precision

I don't understand this edit. In what prior discussions did we agree that excessive precision was allowable? Look at this for an example of what happens when people don't understand the mathematics behind coordinate systems. Powers ^(talk) 00:11, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Don't recall where that discussion was at the moment, but as I remember it, it was pretty well agreed that excessive precision (mostly as a by-product of pulling numbers from wikidata via script) was still better than having no data at all, with you expressing the only dissent on the matter. If we said it "is not allowable", we'd basically be saying having no data is better than having over-exact data, and we definitely didn't reach a consensus there. Texugo (talk) 01:12, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikivoyage talk:Dynamic maps Expedition#Proposal to separate map design from coordinate specification and Wikivoyage talk:Listings#Overprecise geotagging are the two most recent discussions I'm aware of on the subject. My opinion on the subject remains the same as it was in those discussions, and basically matches what Texugo has written above. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:16, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Any reason why a script couldn't round whatever numbers it's importing to four or five decimal places? K7L (talk) 13:43, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Theoretically, there's no reason you couldn't write one if you make a standalone script (which I don't know how to do). But I had used AWB to do import several thousand of them (using this method), and I don't think there is any way to round them using AWB. Texugo (talk) 17:55, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I didn't see much of a consensus in those prior discussions; primarily it's Texugo and Ryan failing to understand my point that precision is part of the data we're putting in our listings, not merely a property of the latitude/longitude values. I certainly wasn't the only person advocating for restricted precision.

Regardless, I hardly think my wording ("Please don't use more than 4 decimal places") would result in "no data". I'm not suggesting we reject such edits, but rather that we make clear that overprice coordinates should be rounded to a proper level of precision in order to be "correct" according to our guidelines. Ryan's edit gives leave for even star articles to have excessive precision. That's my concern.

-- Powers ^(talk) 00:58, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

First, if you admit that there is lack of consensus, then surely you can understand why adding "please don't" to a policy page might seem too strict? Second, in past discussions you have repeatedly said that I do not understand your point, which is false - I have two engineering degrees and understand that the number of digits in a measurement reflects the precision of the measurement - but I fundamentally disagree that it is particularly relevant or important in the context of POIs, where the purpose of the data is to ensure that a user arrives at a location. You have argued that not requiring a level of precision that corresponds to the size of the attraction compromises our data [3], but look at Open Street Map - the world's largest open source mapping project uses seven digits of precision for all POIs so far as I can tell (example). In Google maps you can zoom out to the continent level, right click and choose "What's here", and you get six digits of precision. The USGS database includes seven digits of precision for all POIs [4]. The GeoHack tool used by all Wikimedia sites returns six digits of precision for POIs: [5]. And so on, and so on; clearly the level of precision in GPS coordinates is not universally regarded as having the meaning/importance that you are claiming it does.

As stated previously, I am supportive of anyone who wants to trim coordinates to a precision that they think is more acceptable, and I very much support providing some guidance on what level of precision to use, but I think your insistence that others use a specific level of precision reflects your own personal opinion rather than accepted practice. Users are going to be getting this data from sites like Open Street Map and Wikipedia that often use a level of precision that you find unacceptable, and while I think it's fine to use policy pages to provide guidance as to what level of precision may be appropriate, I think it is both a poor use of people's time and counterproductive to engage in battles with users who use coordinates with levels of precision that you disagree with and don't want to see any such rule enshrined in our policy pages. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:27, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I wonder if it is possible to place a regular expression in the listing box to at least warn of the 4 decimal limit recommendation? As Ryan says, most people (myself included, although I round up) get their coordinates from sources such as Google maps that have high precision by default. Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:38, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Firstly, "the purpose of the data" is not solely "to ensure that a user arrives at a location". We also use the data for mapping, and as I've repeatedly pointed out, our data may be used by third parties. Why should we not endeavor to give them proper precision data in addition to latitude and longitude?

Secondly, Wikipedia specifically recommends limiting precision to what's necessary; you can read about that at w:WP:OPCOORD. Is there a reason this guidance works for them but isn't good enough for us?

Thirdly, I would appreciate it if we didn't personalize this debate. Phrases like "your own personal opinion", "you find unacceptable", etc., imply that the guidance I'm recommending -- which is based on Wikipedia's guidance -- is idiosyncratic or arbitrary. It's not; this is based on sound mathematics, not my own personal conclusions.

Fourthly, I remain baffled why it's so important to you that people be allowed to use whatever level of precision they wish. 1) It is bad data -- the coordinates are fine, but the precision data is bad. We should not be recording and transmitting bad data. 2) Rounding a coordinate after pasting it into a template is quite literally one of the most trivial operations imaginable. It is far more work to go through after the fact and correct the data, not least because the person doing the correcting may not know how much precision is appropriate; we should instead be encouraging contributors to use the proper level of precision right from the start, because it's much easier that way.

-- Powers ^(talk) 19:14, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

To address your four points:

1. I disagree that "proper precision" is a particularly important part of a POI and have offered four examples of organizations that seem to share that opinion. If overprecision truly represented "bad data" then USGS and Open Street Map would not be providing data with 6-7 digits of precision for their POIs.
2. I agree that providing guidance about precision for users is helpful, but disagree that we should be enshrining what seems to me to be a style choice (see response #1 and response #3) into our policies by using phrasing such as "do not". If someone wants to correct levels of precision then by all means they should be encouraged to do so, but we shouldn't be chastising users who copy POI data from Open Street Map, USGS, or Wikipedia. w:WP:OPCOORD makes clear that their advice on this subject is guidance rather than any sort of policy to be enforced ("This page... contains the recommendations and/or opinions of one or more WikiProjects... This advice is not a formal Wikipedia policy or guideline and is not part of the Manual of Style").
3. I disagree with the point that the argument being made is "based on sound mathematics". If I say I arrived at my house at 20:12.43333 that is bad data, unless I actually have a measuring device that measured my arrival time to the thousandth of a second. HOWEVER, if I was asleep last night from 10PM-6AM and then say I was in my bed at 22:20.83334356 that fact is correct, albeit overly precise. The same is true of a POI - if 10.12,20.45 represents a POI, so too does 10.12345,20.446789; it is a style choice for us to trim that data to a lower level of precision.
4. Regarding the assertion that "it is bad data" see my responses in #1 and #3. To the point that rounding is "quite literally one of the most trivial operations imaginable", it is less trivial than simply copying from a source like USGS or Wikipedia, particularly when it requires researching the size of the destination, looking up how many decimals of precision are appropriate for that size, and doing those things when it isn't even clear that rounding should be necessary (see #1). The point I am failing to clearly articulate is that the apparent goal of asking users to perform any extra work when adding POIs seems to be to achieve a level of perfection in data that is not shared by any of the organizations I've cited previously, and that strikes me as unreasonable. Users copying POIs from organizations ranging from USGS to Google to Open Street Map would be violating the proposed policy, and, despite the guidance at w:WP:OPCOORD, coordinates copied from Wikipedia are also unlikely to match the proposed precision rules. Our default should therefore be to provide guidance on what precision to use, but at the same time ensure that we don't create yet another rule that would in any way create extra work or be used to hinder someone from contributing good data simply because that data does not meet standards of perfection.

To me this issue is very similar to debates that have occurred over arcane rules of copyediting which the average user should be able to refer to if desired, but which should never, ever get in the way of creating content. Insofar as at least one user has already been chastised for adding "overprecise" coordinates in the past, I'd like ensure that this issue is one where editors who care are free to trim precision, and guidance is available for those who might be interested, but for everyone else it is not something that would ever become even the tiniest barrier towards contributing. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:01, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I hope to see the temperature of this conversation cool down. While I share Ryan's concert that we don't want to discourage or chastise people who won't take the time to get the precision right, I didn't have a big problem with "please don't", but I would be somewhat more comfortable with some more middle-of-the-road language like "try to avoid over-precision if possible" or some such. Texugo (talk) 22:13, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand any assertion that asking users to round their coordinates is in any way a barrier to contributing. Texugo, could you give an example of a situation when avoiding over-precision wouldn't be possible? Powers ^(talk) 19:01, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, there is the case already stated, of using AWB to quickly add coordinates for a couple thousand places at once, in the absence of a way to round them automatically. I would still contend that it's better to go ahead and give them coordinates, even if over-precise, than it is to leave them blank until someone has time to go through hundreds of pages one by one putting in rounded numbers. If I knew how to make a bot that would round the data as it imported it, or one to go through and round the over-precision we already have from time to time, that would probably be the best solution, but that is outside of my skill set. Texugo (talk) 20:52, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I missed that. That does seem like a legitimate use case, though I could question whether we should be importing en masse like that. But do you think that anyone would actually be discouraged from doing so by wording asking contributors to use an appropriate level of precision? Powers ^(talk) 23:08, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Listing format in code

Does this bug anyone else, or is it just me?

When viewing a diff (like this one) where only the description was edited, the diff does not show the name of the listing, making it much harder to determine if the edit was good or bad.

Is there any way to get around this?

-- Powers ^(talk) 23:31, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

It's not the most convenient, but it doesn't seem to bug me greatly. I just press Ctrl-F and search for a distinctive bit of the text. Nurg (talk) 10:14, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Roly Poly: To include or not to include?

Swept in from the pub

Wikivoyagers native to the USA (Ikan, Powers, Ryan, others?):

I was filling out Buffalo/Allentown and the Delaware District and intended to add a listing for Roly Poly Sandwich Shop to the Eat section, but was honestly surprised to learn that it was a national chain. Now I'm torn on whether to include it. We usually avoid listing chains, but on the other hand this place doesn't have anywhere near the market saturation of a McDonald's or a Subway. And they do serve good food.

So have any of you folks ever heard of this place before? I'm going to write up a listing for it, but I will gladly delete it if others feel it's too well-known to merit mention.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:13, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I've never heard of Roly Poly, although I've been on the West Coast since 1998 and it looks like a franchise that is primarily east of the Mississippi. From their locations list it doesn't appear that they have more than a handful of locations in any given state so I'd say go ahead and list them. There has been a tendency lately to treat our guidelines as if they are instead set-in-stone rules that must be followed to the letter, but if a chain is so sparse that a traveler wouldn't recognize it as a chain then I think common sense dictates that including a listing for it is acceptable. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:26, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

If it is a common enough chain, it should be listed in the article on Fast food in North America if it is only present in a few cities it should be listed there. Unless of course it is a boring place and the food doesn't taste well... Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:36, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

It looks to be a regional chain, based in Atlanta, with presence in about twenty states. I'd never heard of it. K7L (talk) 16:52, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I've never heard of it, either. But I think the main point is that you consider it a good place. So in that case, by all means, list it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:28, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Suspect entries

Swept in from the pub

Cleaning up a number of articles I have found, so far, two articles that include eat and sleep listing that look real but I do not believe they are. They are real names of restaurants and hotels with usually real sounding street names but do not match locations in that city. See Dortmund and Darmstadt edit history and talk pages. I am however finding it difficult to identify who made the entries; appear to be old as they are on Wikitavel and other language Wikivoayge pages too. Any way of identifying the source so can identify other such pages with the same problem? --Traveler100 (talk) 20:00, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

When I want to identify the source of a suspect text for a given page:

• I do the full history export of this page. NB: it only works with the page having a limited history. For example, for fr:Japon it only retrieves the oldest versions (100Mo export file)! The alternative is to retrieve the full DB dump of Wikivoyage and extract the history of the page (ex: with this script).
• Then search the suspect text (from the beginning or the end, I cannot remember). I have written a script that searches the author and date for a text given a export file.

This way I was able to find users that entered dozens of accommodations in batch in the French Wikivoyage in the Wikitravel era (and to remove all their contributions). - Fabimaru (talk) 20:18, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

There's w:Wikipedia:WikiBlame at http://www.wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php which allows the user to select any of the Wikimedia projects and search the history of one page. K7L (talk) 01:10, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Others found in Heidelberg and Dresden. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:00, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Listings without addresses

I was under the impression that listings for language instruction, such as some of these, are inadmissible because, since travellers can't find them without calling the phone number, they constitute advertising and might not even be in the city covered by the article (one had listed in Taganga, too). Your guidance, please. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:54, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I added a Wikivoyage:Listings#Relevance to travel section (for discussion purposes - update or remove as desired) as a way of addressing your concerns. I don't think we'll ever come up with black-and-white rules that address every single borderline case, so for questionable listings like your Spanish school example I would propose that it be clear from the listing content that the business is something that travelers should and do take advantage of, and that it's not just a spammy ad. Some of these listings will always be a judgement call, so I've also made clear that it should be fine to remove borderline cases and ask the contributor to argue the merits on the article talk page. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:06, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Ryan. I like your draft, but I actually think that language schools are perfectly reasonable listings. However, as you point out, they need to be schools, not some random person with a phone number and email address, and perhaps a personal blog. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:11, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree that a language school that caters to tourists is a valid listing subject, but that the barrier to including such listings should be that it is clear from the listing that the business in question is a language school that caters to tourists, rather than just a guy with a blog, or an ESL course for locals. I also wanted to make the point that when it isn't obvious from the information provided that the business is something that should be included in a travel guide, it should be fine to remove the listing pending further discussion. If that's not clear in the draft please update my text. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:27, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I actually don't disagree with anything in your draft. It seems pretty incontestable that a minority of travellers will go to a language school during their visit. Our standards for listing a language school should be the same as our standards for listing any other educational institution: A clear street address or other clear location information beyond the name of the town or general neighborhood, a phone number, classes or courses lasting about 2 weeks or less, and probably some form of certification. If the listing includes all that, I have no problem with it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:48, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Maybe I'm not clear on what you're viewing as the problem here. Any listing, whether it's a school or not, should only be included in the article in which the business operates, and for any listing, if there isn't enough information present in a listing for that listing to be useful to a traveler then it can be removed. My point in writing this draft was to address what I thought was the broader question being raised about how to handle borderline cases for listings that might or might not be appropriate for inclusion in a Wikivoyage travel guide, but perhaps I misunderstood. -- Ryan • (talk) • 07:01, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

We're in agreement. If anything, it might be a slight matter of emphasis or inference or something. Nothing to be concerned about. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:12, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm also a little confused about the topic of this conversation, as there seems to be two separate discussions! On the point of the relevance of businesses to tourists, I think Ryan's draft is good and we can use common sense for different cases. On the point of businesses requiring addresses, I think it really depends. Some developing regions have no clear street naming/numbering system. Listings on Ile des Pins, an article I'm working on now, do not have addresses as there are few street names and none list street numbers. A locality name in the address and coordinates is the best you're going to get. James A ▪ talk 08:39, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm well aware that street addresses do not exist in some places, but the mere name of the town is surely insufficient. There has to be a clearly spelled out location, such that travellers can visit the school without having to call for directions first. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:50, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Maybe. I guess in that case, some of the directions field should be filled in too? And if possible, coordinates? James A ▪ talk 08:59, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Maybe we could require for any listing a way to go there, which could be street address, or coordinates, or directions, except for places that are known by most people at the destination, for instance the only church in the village. In any case we should aim to find coordinates of all listings. Syced (talk) 07:42, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The wording of Wikivoyage:Listings#Relevance to travel seems a bit repetitive and verbose; how many times does the one missing L in "travel(l)er" get flagged on a spell check of this one paragraph? The question of whether something is "relevant to travel" is a separate matter from the "no fixed address" issue. Listing one random individual as a guide, or a language instructor, or a photographer, or some other service creates many listings which are difficult to keep up-to-date as that one person can enter and leave the market at will, with no way for us to know that they're gone. (The same issue applies potentially to individual AirBNB rooms, as compared to a motel or hotel with a large, fixed building that isn't suited to much else but transient lodging.) Conversely, a lumberyard has a known, fixed address but I tend to list them in Wikivoyage sparingly on "relevance to travel" grounds. I might have two lumberyards listed in all of Northern New York. One was operating a parcel receiving service on the side at a major international bridge, the other was a small-town intercity bus stop.

That said, sometimes language instruction may be relevant to travel - but it's a minority of cases. We had language tourism as a requested article that had been attempted once and abandoned. It's usually only worth mentioning when dealing with items like Chicoutimi-Jonquière, a geographically-isolated francophone community where a local community college heavily promotes itself to swivel servants in Ottawa as a destination for a three-week crash course which includes B&B-style lodging in a French-speaking household. A three-week trip out-of-province is travel and in-scope. If that were a three-year programme instead of three weeks, I'd say don't list it as signing even a one-year lease makes one a resident.

There's also the distinction between travel-specific and merely travel-relevant. Travellers buy groceries and petrol, but so do locals. At some point, these things become uninteresting commodities... unless one is on the Trans-Labrador Highway and the list of the few towns with fuel becomes acutely relevant. K7L (talk) 13:48, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I quite agree. I've just plunged ahead and removed part of the text, as I think the point is clear in half the words. As for the language instruction, that seems unrelated to me. Language courses are not at all irrelevant to travellers. A large number of people travel to learn a local language, or make use of their trip to enhance their language skills; I've done so several times. We list plenty of activities that only a minority of travellers make use of, including a wide range of sports, small museums, cooking classes, bird watching etc. In my experience, private teachers are not necessarily less relevant either. A good private teacher is far better than a bad school. Still, it makes total sense that we don't list simple names and phone numbers, as we can't verify them and we can't give proper directions. That's a fair policy decision, and we would equally apply it to guides or taxi drivers or whatever. I'm not even sure the language teachers need a separate section? JuliasTravels (talk) 09:09, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm OK with your edit. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:20, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Go, City and other niche template types

After looking over the great work StellarD has done on the Mérida (Mexico) article in bringing it up to guide status, I noticed that the "go" listing type is in use across the page, with a maroon colour used for the POI markers. I've never seen this before, and on further investigation, found Template:TypeToColor which also describes "city", "view" and "vicinity" as potential listing types. You can see them all in action in listings and on a map here.

So my question is, should we be using these? "Go" sounds like it could be handy, and I wouldn't oppose seeing it used more widely. If that's the case, should Template:Go be created and added to the editing window? And what of the others? Interested to hear people's thoughts. James A ▪ talk 12:41, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

I think adding a 'go' template would be a great idea and would certainly streamline things. –StellarD (talk) 13:58, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Yep. I would have definitely used go type listings if I had known of their existence in my article on Ruta del Tránsito, but that leaves the question open which type of listing I would have used for the side-trips... Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:57, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

These types were initially intended for itineraries were you do find cities with articles along the way or want to mark stopping points for views or key transportation connection points. The Go type makes sense in city articles to mark rail and bus stations but other listing in city articles should be listed using see and do when possible. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:56, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

"City" is intended for itineraries, such as the Trans-Canada Highway. Some of the other languages use "go" or a variant ( "Aller" en fr: ) for "get in" or "get around" listings. K7L (talk) 17:53, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

All interesting info. I've gone ahead and created Template:Go (tagged as experimental) and would propose it as a new listing template for use in the Get in and Get around sections of our guides (for notable train stations, bus depots, ferry terminals, etc). I've also done a very minor test on the Ile des Pins guide. I'll go ahead and post in the pub to gain a wider range of opinions about whether such a template will be useful and what steps are necessary for implementation. James A ▪ talk 12:08, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm ok with this template type for the limited use outlined above, but I think the other "niche template types" need to be examined one at a time. In particular, we have already had more than one conversation around use of the city-type marker, which I suppose might be sometimes fine in itinerary articles but which some of us feel cause more problems than they're worth when they obstruct the info already included on the dynamic map, or when included in region articles or any other maps which also contain establishment-level markers. Texugo (talk) 17:24, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

"Go" is not good as a template name; it's ambiguous. The only article template that uses "Go" is the Itinerary (and even then only sometimes), so unless we're going to use it for Itinerary stops, we need a different name. Powers ^(talk) 02:14, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

It may be deliberately ambiguous, as "go" could be either a "get in" or "get around" transport listing. Then again, fr: uses ==Aller== (Go) for ==Get in==, ==Circuler== (circulate) for "get around" and {{aller}} ({{go}}) for the transport listing icon so maybe "go" is used as "get in"? K7L (talk) 02:55, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Region articles should not contain markers for individual venue {{listing}}s. Those belong in the individual city/town/rural area or big-city district pages. Itineraries will usually be either-or: the markers are all towns (as on Trans-Canada Highway, a cross-country road trip) or they are all individual venues and landmarks (Breaking Bad Tour and Radiator Springs are pure lists of venues). I don't know of one which mixes city markers with venue listings, putting both on the map together. K7L (talk) 02:10, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

It's easily imaginable to have an itinerary which includes high points for views, some isolated castles and a cape with a lighthouse as well as towns. Why shouldn't it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:42, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

It's a question of map scale. Zoom in to the point where the "high points for views" are visible, and there aren't going to be more than one or a handful of towns that still fit on the map. Trans-Canada Highway doesn't show every hill and every lighthouse in the country, they'd never all fit. K7L (talk) 02:51, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

But that's a particularly long itinerary. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:56, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Just for reference a couple of example itineraries using the POI types: Rheinsteig , Rheinburgenweg. --Traveler100 (talk) 03:29, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree we need to have a separate discussion and consensus for each of the types, and at this stage, I am solely seeking consensus for something along the lines of Template:Go for use in guides, not itineraries. The name 'go' is not perfect, although there aren't any other clear options. We could name it 'travel' or 'transport' instead, potentially, but then it isn't in the imperative form that we currently use for section headers and listing templates. James A ▪ talk 09:45, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Can we get clarification on exactly what listings it would be used for? Powers ^(talk) 17:39, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Transportation listings. "Get in" and "Get around". That way, the miscellany sections at the end of the page (connect, cope, stay safe/stay healthy) are numbered from '1' (and not from where the transport sections left off) and have a different icon from the transportation. It's a subtle change (basically, the bus and train stations end up with a reddish suitcase icon) but it potentially affects a large number of pages. I don't see anything harmful in it. K7L (talk) 17:58, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

The problem with type=go is that the counter will be reset when switching from Get in to Get around, and there will be two instances of type=go objects with number 1. The easiest workaround is to do continuous numbering for type=go that will basically add to the continuous numbering for type=other. I discussed it with Joachim long time ago, but he was reluctant to implement this change. Joachim, would you perhaps reconsider? We have to use type=other for transportation-related object, and that is not a good solution. --Alexander (talk) 20:21, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

I did notice this issue on the Merida guide, so hopefully there is a solution to it. To clarify, Template:Go (or whatever we decide to name it) is proposed to only be used in the Get in and Get around sections of guides, for cases where a listing may be relevant or useful for a transportation node. Such "nodes" may include airports, ferry terminals, major train stations and major bus interchanges/depots. The list is not exhaustive, but it's also not absolute. I am in no way proposing that we start listing every item from the list above in every guide as we currently do for See, Buy, etc. However there are some cases, especially in non-Western countries which may be lacking detailed maps, where a listing for major transportation nodes can be very useful for travellers. For example, if you look at the Get in by bus section of the Pattaya article, it's clear that the location of the various bus depots marked on a dynamic map could be very useful, and using a different marker from the standard green Template:Listing marker would only seek to make things clearer. James A ▪ talk 09:35, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Glad I just saw this. I have recently started using 'Go' templates (not sure what the catalyst was, but probably saw someone else use it) and it is effective in showing major stations / airports. Andrewssi2 (talk) 10:08, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

A separate numbering for "GO" would be incompatible with itineraries [6]. The sequential numbering of the POIs would be disturbed if "GO" had its own numbering. - After the next software update on Monday I'll try to make a compatible proposal. - Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 18:25, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

For the section "Get around" there is already a special symbol "around". So this section can be numbered separately. Is that an acceptable solution [7]? - All symbol names have mainly internal importance. For the English language version own terms can be assigned too, for example, "traffic" = "go" and so on. I will then enter this names in a translation table, and after the next update "understands" the script these new terms. - The symbol's shape and color can also be changed. Suggestions are welcome. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 17:31, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think that it's a good solution. However, we should agree on the name of this new "get-around" type of object. Would type=transport sound like a proper title? Finding a distinctive symbol for such objects would be great too. --Alexander (talk) 17:42, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

If other languages already have this, there is a map icon already in use. I believe fr: had a red suitcase as the transport ("aller") listing symbol. K7L (talk) 03:49, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

The icon "around" [8] is used by fr.WV for the section "Circuler" (Get around) [9]. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 11:02, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

One (very) late note in case anyone stumbles on this thread, the current listing editor code needs to be updated to support any new listing templates that might be created. It is easy enough to add support for something like {{go}}, but before anyone gets crazy and starts creating lots of specialized listing tag types please be aware that they will not be editable via the editor without further code changes. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:22, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

The {{city}} tag usually appears in itinerary, which wouldn't trigger the listing editor as itinerary uses different section headers (understand, prepare, go, stay safe) which don't match the ones that enable the editor on a destination article. If we were inviting the voyager to "see" London, "do" Paris, "buy" Cologne, "eat" wieners and frankfurters, "drink" Champagne and doze off to "sleep" in a big old Adirondack chair then these cities would trigger the listing editor... but would we do this as anything but a joke? K7L (talk) 13:13, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something, but {{city}} doesn't exist, so if it's being used anywhere it won't do anything and thus shouldn't be a problem for the current listing editor. -- Ryan • (talk) • 13:57, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

It would be best to make Template:Listing more accommodating of new tags, so we don't lose the semantic value of tagging things as (for example) "Learn" or "Go". Template:Listing should just default unknown listing-type parameters to a generic Listing. Powers ^(talk) 14:18, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm seeing {{marker|type=red (or blue) on Trans-Siberian Railway as well as {{listing|type=city at the endpoints of the Icefields Parkway or on the Rideau Canal, the Windsor-Quebec corridor, the Trans-Canada/Yellowhead and Trans-Labrador Highways. Conversely, the American Industry Tour uses just plain {{listing}} with no further type specification for everything from entire cities to individual museums. The main Route 66 itinerary has no waypoint markers at all. If there's some odd "type=" field on a {{listing}} or {{marker}} the listing editor needs to retain it. K7L (talk) 15:42, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Got it. See WV:Listing editor#Changelog (2.0.x) - the most recent updates to the listing editor fixed an issue where custom "type" values could be lost; now the listing editor will maintain any {{listing | type=crazy_new_type}} values. However, with regards to new listing templates like {{go}} or {{city}}, for the listing editor to work it needs to know what templates it is supposed to handle, and what the valid parameters are for those templates, so my original comment was just pointing out that if people want to introduce new listing templates (not types) that the listing editor won't support them without code changes. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:18, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

What do #40 and #7 mean in the Multiple Locations example?

What do #40 and #7 mean in the Wikivoyage:Listings#Multiple_locations example? Why not just leave these "name" fields empty, since it is probably the same store name? Thanks! Syced (talk) 07:27, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

That's the number of the location [10]. The name field is a mandatory field, it must not be left blank | name=NAME OF LISTING (REQ). -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 17:25, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Since when?? Powers ^(talk) 23:33, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

The field "name" is marked with (REQ.) in the template documentation. I overlooked the addition in en.WV: "There are no mandatory fields, but it strongly recommended to insert at least one (Possibly the name) ...". The version: "Only name is mandatory, but you should always provide more information." is valid in all the other language versions. -- Mey2008 (talk) 05:49, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Our documentation is correct from a policy standpoint. If the listing code requires the name field, it needs to be changed. Powers ^(talk) 15:20, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Segway tours

Swept in from the pub

In recent times several touts have added their segway tour onto our city articles (the last one for Florence was just reverted by me). They are contrary to our WV:Tour policy, right? Should we update the wording to explicitly exclude segway tours? Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:56, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

The old "Activity listings" page (since consolidated into WV:Listings) used to include an image of Segway Tours as an example activity. I think things like Segway Tours, "haunted" tours, pub crawls, and related activities that pop up are a borderline case - I usually leave them unless the listing is particularly touty or there are a bunch, but the main "value add" of those sorts of activities is that you've got a guide instead of doing things on your own, thus running afoul of the "traveler could fulfill the substance of the tour independently" guidance, so if it's a listing in an article that already has tons of sights and activities (like Florence) then pruning the borderline listings seems fine. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:26, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

I think there should be some sort of enforceable policy. If there is a "use your own best judgement" policy, you and I and most of the regulars around here will probably be fine with it, but a tout whose listing got reverted will probably become angrier than (s)he would have been anyway... Especially if a segway tour is listed in one city and reverted in another. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:29, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

The value-add for Segway tours is the Segway training and usage. In my experience, the sightseeing portion is secondary. =) Powers ^(talk) 01:29, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

So it appears that we do not in fact have consensus as to whether segway tours are to be reverted on sight or not. Am I getting this right? Imho especially policies that call (implicitly) for immediate reversion (e.g. don't tout and WV:tour) have to be as clear as is humanly possible. There should only be the smallest of grey areas. As almost all major towns have some sort of segway tour (I see them almost weekly in Dresden and I am not even looking for them) this is a potentially huge gray area... Hobbitschuster (talk) 12:26, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

High charge phone numbers

As well as the phone field we also have a tollfree field. Should we also have a extra charge phone number field? Some countries have a range of numbers that will change high minute rates for mobile phones in the country and international calls. For example in the United Kingdom#Connect. I think it would be a good idea to highlight this for those not aware of the method or the range of numbers for a particular country. --Traveler100 (talk) 14:42, 5 September 2015 (UTC) Alternatives are moving the number out of the phone field or some highlight text in the field when you cannot find an alternative number. --Traveler100 (talk) 14:48, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes.

Excellent idea.

Perhaps with a three dollar sign of $$$ instead of the normal phone symbol. The UK is a good example where numbers that domestically begin with the digits 01, 02, 03 (in our format, that would be +44 1, +44 2, +44 3) are very much cheaper (or often included in a phone plan) and numbers beginning 084 and 087 are expensive. Also, many 084 and 087 numbers can not be accessed at all from many countries overseas. Numbers beginning 09 (+44 9 in our usual format) can be outrageously expensive. Many visitors are ripped off without them ever being aware of the distinction. BushelCandle (talk) 15:22, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

There are probably hundreds of additional fields that might be useful in some instances, so I don't think a new parameter for each one is the right solution and that any new parameter should be broadly useful. If I'm understanding correctly "extra charge phone numbers" is an edge case and thus could just be noted using the listing description or another existing field? -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:33, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough.

I think this issue has arisen because of the large number of (largely) good edits that User: ‎WOSlinker has been making recently. BushelCandle (talk) 16:47, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Premium numbers? That could get spammy very quickly. Do we even want these? There seem to be two broad classes of premium number; a low-premium (like +44 845 in the UK) which kicks back 1 or 2p/minute to the called party, and a high premium (in a format like +1-900-976-SCAM and pricing from $0.50 to $5/minute up to a high limit like $50/call, with most of the proceeds spent on advertising to find the next sucker to pay this inflated price). An extra field for "mobile telephone" exists in some Wikivoyage languages (as caller-pays airtime in many countries), but I question whether premium numbers should appear in the guide at all. Certainly listings with high-premium (0900 or whatever) numbers should be banned outright, and no premium number of any class should be listed without clearly indicating its price and its premium status. Anything where the called party is paid and the price charged to the caller's phone bill is potentially dodgy, even if it's hiding in some range (like the former +1 809 points) where one would expect international geographic numbers. K7L (talk) 16:51, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

The numbers can be useful to tourists. For example many theater booking numbers are extra charge numbers (eg. in Newbury and Thatcham) and for example the Manchester tourist information center is too. I often call across boarders (particularly in Europe) and have been caught out by this, as although I have fixed fee global rate on landline and mobile these numbers' charges come through nevertheless making the bills a little larger than expected. --Traveler100 (talk) 17:00, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

No references?

Swept in from the pub

Could anyone tell me why there is no "References" section in Wikivoyage articles? Without that, there's no way to verify the correctness of articles here. Na Tra (talk) 04:46, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Because much of the content is based on original research - the experiences of travelers and residents of places around the world. Why would you want references for that? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:11, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikivoyage is a travel guide not an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. Unlike Wikipedia original work is allowed and thus does not require a referenceable source. Yes there is a risk that something is not correct, but it is encouraged that contributors and editors add URLs to primary sites to a listing were possible. The thing is that some points of interest may not have another source of information. Any dubious information will be discussed on the article or user talk page and edited appropriately. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:18, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

OK I see. Original research, so references are impossible. But it's still so dangerous. It's just so easy to make up something and no one's gonna be able to find it. Do you have any ideas to prevent this from happening instead of using references? 14:02, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Although it would be very unfortunate if a traveller would be searching for something that doesn't exist, he/she will hopefully fix such an error afterwards. Fortunately, however, this is more an issue in theory than it is in practice, so far. While original research is permitted, most listings for hotels, restaurants etc come with phone numbers and weblinks to their official sites. Lots of other information is verifiable online. And let's be fair: if someone would really want to be malicious by providing false information, it's easy enough to create an accompanying reference; so it wouldn't be any guarantee anyway :-)

As Traveler100 said: if there's doubt about the correctness of information, it will be discussed and mentioned in the article. Did you have any specific doubts? JuliasTravels (talk) 14:20, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Well there may well be factual inaccuracies in some "understand" section or other, but as our focus is travel, they are not all that important in the great scheme of things. It gets worse if their are factual inaccuracies in travel topics (though as they are usually written by more than one person with knowledge on the subject these things get corrected quite quickly) and it would be even worse if there were factual errors in hotel or restaurant listings.... Which is why we provide ample contact detail, including the official website of said establishment to check. You see, our focus and our linking to primary information combat what you perceive as an oversight in our lack of citations. Thus far this has served us (and I daresay our readers) well, as probably nobody who reads a travel guide has nerve to comb through dozens of footnotes... And we do in some cases provide links to back up claims on the talk page or in <!--comment tags--> best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:21, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

And sometimes we send voyagers on a lengthy journey to South Detroit on the midnight train to anywhere. Don't stop believing... That said, the usual issues are listings for something that once did exist (Merrickville lost its hotel to the Great Recession, Cartwright (Labrador)'s hotel burned to the ground) or the owner of an establishment posts a deliberately one-sided laudatory listing for some rubbish dump. Citing references won't prevent listings for defunct venues; a list of sources might be useful for "Understand" or similar descriptive background text, but they're usually buried on the talk page, in edit summaries or document comments as the idea is for the voyager to print off (or carry on a microSD card) a copy of a destination guide for use off-line, on the road, from points where they don't have the ability to access additional information from cited external sources. As a Wikipedian, yes, it is counter-intuitive; we link {{listing}}s to the venue's own official site (which is usually highly promotional) but not to neutral, objective external sources. K7L (talk) 15:38, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't know whether it still appears on any of our official policy pages, but at some point we had the easy to remember sentence "If you find yourself wishing to provide a source for your statement, it probably doesn't belong here anyhow", or something to that extent. Our be fair policy for example skirts most issues that would commonly result in tons of refs being necessary over at WP. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:57, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks all of you guys for your comprehensive explanations! Beside no references, I have too the same worries like K7L about listings for something that no longer exists. Should we build a bot to mark listings that were last updated since a specified time with a small warning, like warning: last updated more than xxx months ago and add them to a category like "Outdated listings"? That would help the readers as well as the writers. Na Tra (talk) 17:10, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh. Template:Listing has already a parameter for that purpose: lastedit. Unfortunately I rarely see it used in articles here. It would be nice to have the job done by a bot, highlight the old ones with red, then add all of them to a category. Na Tra (talk) 17:27, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

If you look at an article with recently updated listings (let's say Hof for a random example) you will notice a small "last updated" behind the word "edit" (or was it before it?). If you edit said listing, you can check the box "verified information up to date" and it gets automatically reset to the date you edit if you do so Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:24, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I've just tried to edit a listing in Hof and the date automaticall updates. Impressive :) Na Tra (talk) 17:38, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I must say I consider it one of our best recent innovations, though of course I'd wish for it to have been around for longer already... But that will surely come with time ;-) Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:40, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

(Response to Na Tra) As Hobbitschuster notes, many listings now include a "last edited" date indicating when the listing was last verified as being up-to-date, but that field was only added to the listing template five months ago, so at this point the vast majority of listings do not yet have that field filled out. It wouldn't hurt to create a category to track articles with out-of-date listings now, but until the "last edited" field is used more widely that category will most likely contain every article with listings. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:28, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Uhm. I see the problems now. So that means there's still a lot of work ahead with the checking of old listings... =.= Na Tra (talk) 17:40, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

The "last edited" field is removed whenever I use the editor. I use the common combination of Windoze 8 (ugh!) and Firefox. Is this a bug or an undocumented feature? 146.199.36.180 20:00, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Optional fields are automatically removed by the listing editor when they have no value, which is what appears to have happened. If you see a non-empty "lastedit" date being removed please let me know. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:30, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your useful work improving the listing editor - but naturally I assumed that every time the new listing editor was now used (going forwards) it would add the last time an edit was made. It seems strangely counter-intuitive to arrange things so that this potentially very useful field is not only not completed automatically (when using the new listing editor) but actually removed entirely! What's the point of that? 146.199.36.180 20:46, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Adding a new listing with the listing editor automatically populates the lastedit field. Editing an existing listing with the listing editor only updates the field when the user explicitly chooses to do so since they might only be correcting a typo or performing some other action that doesn't necessarily indicate that the listing information is up-to-date. See Wikivoyage talk:Listings#Next steps for the original discussion on the subject. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:31, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

But, Ryan, why have it removed when empty? Not everyone uses the editor all the time, and when you're working in the wiki-syntax, it would be handy if the field is there, or not? JuliasTravels (talk) 21:37, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

The listing editor can be modified to always add an empty "lastedit" field, or to treat "lastedit" as a field to be removed if empty (the current behavior). Changing the behavior is a matter of updating a single flag, and I'm happy to update it if there is a consensus that it should be changed. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:53, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Data geeks rejoice!

Swept in from the pub

Our quarter million listings, in a big fresh CSV file.

Sort columns (or apply maths) to find anomalies to fix.

Syced (talk) 06:53, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Idea: sub-categories for (certain) listings

Swept in from the pub

I have recently taken a dead trees travel guide to hand and found that in its equivalent of "eat" listings, the type of food the establishment in question is focused on was mentioned in brackets right after the name... How about we enable such a category or the likes for our listings? e.g. "Eat" subtype: Mexican food or "sleep" subtype: Hostel. Is this a patently absurd idea, is it technologically impossible or what do you think? Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:13, 31 October 2015 (UTC) 

Sub-heading are certainly allowed, the standard ones being 'Budget', 'Mid-range' and 'Splurge' as per the article template. However, depending on the situation, I think a little creative license is allowed. I've sometimes divided See listings into 'Museums', 'Parks and nature', 'Built attractions', etc. And Eat can easily be divided by cuisine, but you should be careful that you limit sub-headings to only 3-4. I think Melbourne#Eat has got a little out of hand... James A ▪ talk 09:02, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

For some regions such subdivisions may be good, but e.g. in Finland it is more or less useless: finding your choice of fast food (under Budget or just looking around in the town centre) is easy and any proper restaurant will be able to serve you beef, salmon and some vegetarian dish. Then we have good ethnic restaurants and restaurant specializing in some type of food (many do, of course), but there will seldom be many enough of any specific type for a subheading or even a keyword to make sense (one exception being Helsinki, where Finnish, Russian and "international" food are treated separately). Choice of restaurant would usually depend on other factors as well, and having keywords for even the most common ones easily becomes absurd. --LPfi (talk) 11:01, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Subdividing by subject rather than price was actually not what I had in mind... I thought more along the lines of putting some sort of qualifier into the template for the listing itself (e.g. "sub-type" after "alt" or something...) We could maybe allow users to filter for their preferred food choice then... Maybe even make the listings of a certain city searchable by type rather than by district... But the latter is probably too complicated... Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:54, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

The idea has merit, but there is some complexity involved in categorizing eating establishments (and retailers) that can't easily be captured by a simple single-subtype system. Powers ^(talk) 20:17, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Interesting idea! Adding a new 'sub-type' parameter to the listing templates would be easy enough. The challenge arises when how to categorise or sort that information on the article page. Our articles are static, so there'd be no way to sort listings by sub-type, or highlight the Mexican listings, etc. Maybe it's something for a future Individual Engagement Grant (IEG). James A ▪ talk 23:44, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Map of all listings, one color per article

Swept in from the pub

I created a map of listings, where all listings of a particular article have the same colour. This map allows me to find listings that are in the wrong article. It can also help when redefining article boundaries. For instance "National Theatre of Japan" is officially in Chiyoda but it made more sense geographically to include it in the Akasaka article.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zdgU5S0xQ47M.kvPyWZN-k2E8&usp=sharing

It is only a prototype for now, but let me know if there is interest for such a system for the whole world. Cheers! Syced (talk) 06:40, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

This is awesome and has huge potential. Great idea Syced! Gizza ^(t)(c) 02:57, 12 November 2015 (UTC)