Wikivoyage talk:Migration to Wikimedia

Integrating as a Wikimedia project

Swept from the pub:

This does not seem to have been brought up in a long time. I believe that integrating would be positive for all involved

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

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

If Project:Internet Brands was interested in moving the site to Wikimedia management I suspect many people would be in support, but since they own the trademarks it would be up to them to make that decision (hopefully User:(WT-en) IBobi or someone from IB can provide their position). Moving to Wikimedia without their blessing, and without trademarks, would essentially mean forking the project, and while that's entirely legal since all content is CC-SA licensed, using Wikivoyage to have that discussion might not be entirely appropriate. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 13:19, 24 February 2012 (EST)

Furthermore, if ads are an issue, registered users can turn ads off in their site preferences. (WT-en) LtPowers 13:59, 24 February 2012 (EST)

Yes I realize that those within the Wikimedia movement are free to take all the content here and put it under their own "name" as the content is CC just as those here are free to do the same with Wikipedia. I do not think splitting the editor base however is best for the content in question / open source movement. We already have too much duplication of efforts in other areas. I thought I would post the idea here to see if those here had any interest in collaborating more closely. I sit on the board of Wikimedia Canada and could bring this forwards to the WMF if there was interest. Good to know about the ads Lt.(WT-en) Doc James 07:41, 25 February 2012 (EST)

Internet Brands, which owns the Wikivoyage trademark, is a commercial entity looking to make money off this site, and I can't imagine any situation in which they would be supportive of this plan, regardless of potential benefits to the Wikivoyage project and community. Otherwise, what Ryan said ;) --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 22:08, 25 February 2012 (EST)

Moving to Wikimedia

Swept from the pub:

There is a fairly advanced plan to launch a new copy of Wikivoyage under the wing of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, who operate Wikipedia. This would get rid of the ever-increasing ads, solve many of the technical problems the site has faced in the past 6 years, and the proposal has near-unanimous support among administrators. (WT-en) jpatokal 23:20, 1 July 2012 (EDT)

As something of an anticipatory note, I would encourage curious Wikivoyagers to avoid discussing other travel wiki projects on Wikivoyage. While such a move by Wikivoyage's admins would clearly affect this site, I think it is more appropriate to keep discussions at the relevant site. If you have other questions or want clarification, you can always contact me or any other admin from WT via talk page or email—ideally through Wikimedia Meta, not Wikivoyage. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:11, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

I have reverted User:(WT-en) IBobi's deletion of this section. While I am not in favor of using Wikivoyage as a vehicle to "promote" a fork, our policies do not allow the removal of others' good faith comments. Our practice has never been to whitewash the existence of other travel guides, as evident by the existence of Project:Fellow traveller Expedition—we have always actually supported others' work in the Creative Commons especially. Moreover, previous forks (Wikivoyage in particular) have been discussed at length over many years at Wikivoyage, as they obviously have been relevant to this community, and were not subject to deletion. An IB employee violating our policies to remove users' comments seems highly inappropriate. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:30, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

With the support of other admins Ryan and Peter, I have removed the link to a competing travel site. The rest of this comment stands for the moment while a policy against fork discussion is drafted.--(WT-en) IBobi 20:16, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

I supported removing the links, Ryan did not comment. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 20:22, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

Oh right -- that was LTPowers--(WT-en) IBobi 20:39, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

(undent) My view: Discussion of the Wikimedia fork, including links to said fork, is and should be allowed on Wikivoyage, and Internet Brands' ham-fisted attempts to censor this discussion should be reverted on sight.

We have, as far as I can tell, a *completely unanimous* consensus in favor moving to Wikimedia: the Meta RFC is up to 63 in favor, and I haven't seen a single WT user not on IB's payroll say that they would prefer to stay with IB, thank you very much. So if this community is in favor of discussion, site notices or whatever, it's silly to claim that this is against Wikivoyage's "rules" somehow -- the rules exist to serve the community, and the community's will is clear. (Compare this with the Wikivoyage fork, which only had support from a small minority at the time.) (WT-en) jpatokal 20:52, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

The distinction may be subtle, and lost on some, but Wikivoyage is not the same thing as its admins. If that were true, then forking WT would make the new site WT. And clearly that is not the case. WT has a right and an obligation to protect itself against self-destructive behavior, like a fork and loss of admins, even if a lot of admins "support" that destruction. There are 7 million travelers a month that also make up the Wikivoyage community, and they are decidedly ill-served by this fork. They are the silent supermajority. It is necessary in the course of this discussion to separate one's own interests from the interests of the Wikivoyage project, and if you cannot do that, then recuse yourself from this discussion. If you are acting in the best interests of this project, you must refrain from supporting that which undermines it, on its very pages.--(WT-en) IBobi 21:06, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

Will you be separating your own interests in these discussions as a current IB employee? I have no idea what this has to do with Jani's own personal interests, on the other hand. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 21:21, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

That I am aware of, it is clear to 100% of admins that the best interests of this project lie in getting out from under IB's thumb. There is no "silent supermajority"-- those users have no loyalty to this particular URL, certainly not as much loyalty as the long-time admins here have displayed. Your "supermajority" will gladly follow the content to whatever ground is most fertile for keeping it fresh and growing.(WT-en) texugo 21:26, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

What I know, Peter, is that someone who is encouraging Wikivoyage's admins to leave Wikivoyage does not have Wikivoyage's best interests at heart.--(WT-en) IBobi 21:31, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

My interest since 2004, which has driven me to contribute more on this site than anybody else (literally: check your edit stats), has been our mission statement: "Wikivoyage (http://wikivoyage.org) is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide.". And the consensus is that it's in the best interests of this project to move to a new home. (WT-en) jpatokal 21:35, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

Wikivoyage is just the name. All of us have the project's best interests at heart. They just do not happen to coincide with IB's money-centric interests.(WT-en) texugo 21:34, 2 July 2012 (EDT)

Well, what User:(WT-en) IBobi wrote above is true: only 64 users have expressed their support for the fork. If the result is that the community splits in two, then this would be a disaster for both projects. And if the result is that there will be one project with only admins and another project with no admins, then this would also be a disaster for both projects. And if all editors go to the new site while the readers stay on the old site (or vice versa), there would also be a disaster. If the Wikimedia move is going to work, then there would really have to be an almost 100% support for the move amongst both readers and editors. I'm seeing parallels with how some projects try to move away from Wikia, but the content remains on Wikia, so the community is split in two, being a disaster for both projects. I really hope that there won't be a similar disaster with Wikivoyage. [Note: I am writing mainly as a reader of Wikivoyage. I rarely edit here, but I am more active on some Wikimedia projects. As you can see, I even have a red name in my signature.] --(WT-en) Stefan2 10:28, 4 July 2012 (EDT)

There have been many issues with projects splitting off from Wikia due to their corporate greed (I've experience it first-hand). Unfortunately, majority, but not all, have been utter failures. But I think this is a very different situation. The Wikimedia Foundation is huge, much larger than Wikia or Internet Brands or any tiny site trying to go independent. This fork isn't about going alone; it's about moving to the WMF with all their resources, expertise and genuine passion. (WT-en) JamesA ^>talk 06:12, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

iBobi, if you believe that it is only the administrators who wish to fork, then we should invite the regular users and viewers of Wikivoyage to join the discussion and voice their opinion. I'd propose adding a note to MediaWiki:Sitenotice alerting all visitors to the fork discussion; then we can get the ideas and opinions of all editors, instead of just administrators and IB employees. (WT-en) JamesA ^>talk 10:26, 4 July 2012 (EDT)

"Silent supermajority"? Richard Nixon say what? (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 15:29, 4 July 2012 (EDT)

(undent) Wikimedia has today given their assent to hosting the fork, subject to community consensus at the RFC. Now's the time to go chip in here: Requests for comment/Travel Guide. And to those new to the whole story, here's a little background. (WT-en) jpatokal 08:16, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

Please remove the two links you have posted to external competing travel sites (one at the top of this section and one at the bottom) as well as the link to your personal blog.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 13:40, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

I have removed your links for violating the external link usage policy.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 14:20, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

IBobi, I would strongly encourage you to reconsider doing that, as I don't think it is serving you, IB, or the future of this site very well. I have restored the links you removed, and would advise you to seek a broader community consensus before undertaking more of what is widely considered censorship. (Please also take a look at my response to you on my talk page.) --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:31, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

If citing a policy violation and correcting it with a routine edit that any user can conduct (or revert, as you have shown) is censorship, then what is not censorship? Blanket claims of censorship are unfounded, and irresponsible of anyone who is aware of the nature of this discussion, or of this host's history over recent years, and I'll happily listen to any examples you care to cite. We do not and will not interfere with the editorial content of Wikivoyage (which is the clear implication of this outrageous claim).

That said, there is no written policy on using Wikivoyage to host discussions of forks like the WMF proposal, or any other processes that are damaging to Wikivoyage and its users. There also is no policy to prevent an admin or group of admins from discussing the sabotage of the servers upon which this site runs. Does that mean everyone should sit back and fiddle while Rome burns? At some point, lack of policy is not an excuse to fail to take action. The previous host of this project reserved the right to act unilaterally when necessary in order to best serve this site. We have not taken that step, though it is within our rights and responsibilities as project stewards to do so.

I realize this is a tricky issue and has not really been discussed before (though it certainly ought to have been when the WV precedent was set). There are clear conflicts of interest at play here, given that a number of the admins who are defending this discussion have supported the fork and would like to see the discussion continue for that reason. Ideally they'd recuse themselves here, as at least one of them has already done.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 18:25, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

IBobi, here's the disconnect:

"there is no written policy on using Wikivoyage to host discussions of forks like the WMF proposal, or any other processes that are damaging to Wikivoyage and its users"

Discussing a fork is emphatically NOT "damaging to Wikivoyage and its users". It may, however, be damaging to Internet Brands. In the open source world a fork discussion is a way for users to raise concerns, and if there isn't an agreeable resolution to go out and try to address those concerns on their own; a fork is often the best way for a community to improve things, as shown by projects like x.org or LibreOffice. You have elsewhere used the analogy that allowing discussion of a fork is like allowing use of Wikivoyage for "discussing ways to sabotage the servers upon which this site runs", and the fact that a fork equates to an attack on the site's infrastructure is a telling sign that there is a major, major disconnect in how IB as a corporation understands what Wikivoyage is. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 18:36, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

[edit conflict] There are clear conflicts of interest at play here—Under that argument you should recuse yourself ;) Policy is interpreted by the group, and our community has a history of interpreting and enforcing policy in ways that directly contradict our personal opinions. But policies are determined by community procedures, and two of the relevant ones are: a) looking at practice over time—how we have coordinated in reaction to situations, and b) soliciting opinions. Thus far everyone either disagrees with you regarding policy interpretation, or in my lone case, thinks you might have a case. But having a case doesn't mean you win.

I'll toss out one last encouragement to take another look at my talk page responses, because I honestly don't think you helping anyone with this. Not yourself, not IB, not WT's admins, not anyone interested in what is going on. You do seem to be helping the project fork move along, but as I've said, that's not a goal of mine to the exclusion of all the work I do and continue to do here. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 18:39, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

The clear way that this discussion damages our users is that there are 7 million of them who will come here next month and the month after that, looking for the best travel content, and regardless of what the admins supporting the fork wish to do, those users are ill-served by a drop in the curating of this site.

There is indeed a disconnect, and it is between WT the project and WT the site. There is huge overlap, but they are distinct. My interests lie equally with both, while an admin who supports this fork and supports discussing it here is quite clearly concerned with the project alone. At any rate, your candor and insight are appreciated.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 19:33, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

You are entirely correct in your assertion that WT the project and WT the site are distinct. WT the project is the collaboration of the contributors, including the admins, registered users, IP editors and general non-contributing users, and the support and hosting of the site, whereas WT the site, is where the project is currently hosted, along with the commercial interests of the owners, and ownership of the name. The IP users and non-contributing users will follow the project or stay with the site as long as the site provides them with value. The admins and registered users are concerned primarily with the project and are in essence, the spirit of the project. Where they go, the project goes. They can not be coerced, only persuaded. So far there is little evidence of convincing persuasion going on. If IB wants to keep the majority of the project, they will need to show the project why it is to the project's advantage to continue in an environment where there has been a constant struggle between the values of the project and the values of the site. The question then becomes: Is damage control feasible or is the relationship broken beyond repair.

The content is another distinct entity, which is neither the project nor the site, as it is not owned by either. Both project and site are free to use the content within the constraints of the licence, just like anyone else, and what they want to do with it appears to be diverging. • • • (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) ^Talk 05:58, 14 July 2012 (EDT)

Unified login

We are still working out how we can identify new accounts as the same person as old accounts.

If we have the userlist, this is possible. Wikimedia has a system they call "unified login" which uses a MediaWiki extension developed just for Wikipedia and its siblings. Originally, every language Wikipedia had its own independent user list, so WP needed a means of detecting after the fact that the same user with the same password existed on more than one of its sites and "unifying" them. In some cases, the same name belonged to someone else so whomever had the most edits had the best chance of getting the name on wikis where it wasn't in use. There's a huge amount of documentation on Mediawiki.org, Wikipedia and other WMF sites about how this was supposed to work.

If we don't have the userlist (for instance, the IB-hosted stuff) then there is no option other than to register again. K7L (talk) 04:21, 16 October 2012 (CEST)

I wonder whether it's safe already to rename a page like User:(WT-en) DenisYurkin (and its subpages) to, respectively, User:DenisYurkin. Is it too early to clarify in this article? --DenisYurkin (talk) 19:36, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

You should ask to have the accounts merged at Wikivoyage:User account migration. You also need to provide some evidence that you own the Wikitravel account. See m:Wikivoyage/Migration/New policies/Cross-identification of accounts. When your accounts are merged, I think that the pages are moved automatically. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:26, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! BTW, why isn't this mentioned in this article? --DenisYurkin (talk) 20:38, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

...as well as where and how to request rename after account ownership is verified. --DenisYurkin (talk) 05:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

--Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:11, 11 December 2012 (UTC) I really want to keep my WikiTravel name (andrewssi) however it is deemed to similar to an existing 'Andrew 551'! This seems really absurd, and it would help me want to migrate if I could use my original name. Can anyone help?

Migration started

Swept in from the pub

The preparations of the migration of all Wikivoyage content to Wikimedia servers started. On Friday, two Wikivoyage admins will fly to San Fransisco to support this process. The WMF staffers aim to launch the site on October 31.

In this time all content is transferred from our servers to these of WMF. Shortly before we will stop editing at the German servers. If you like to make mass text replacements like "Get out" to "Go next" it should be done at the time of the migration. --Unger (talk) 07:06, 17 October 2012 (CEST)

If this "get out" → "go next" replacement is attempted again, perhaps the articles tagged as joke destinations should be left alone? Some of them do use "get out" as "escape with your life and don't look back". Sodom and Gomorrah, for instance, would have the whole "Lot's wife" cautionary tale were they created. K7L (talk) 20:11, 17 October 2012 (CEST)

Feel free to revert any where the change doesn't make sense. I admit I neglected to consider joke articles that are in Mainspace; I did omit the ones in Wikivoyage:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense and its subpages. LtPowers (talk) 20:51, 17 October 2012 (CEST)

Should we update our site notice to point to the Mediawiki migration link and to the Wikimedia Logo proposals page? Both could do with some publicity — Ravikiran r (talk) 07:53, 18 October 2012 (CEST)

I second that. If only Meta would update their sitenotice. JamesA ^>talk 08:26, 18 October 2012 (CEST)

Fantastic to hear that plans are progressing well! Would migration also present a possibility to change the format of links using the listing tags on :en, as mentioned previously in the initial migration bugs? Since that requires re-parsing every article anyhow, it seems like the least painful time to do so, assuming that the edits to the listing code itself are sufficiently trivial. -- D. Guillaume (talk) 22:14, 20 October 2012 (CEST)

Tool to compare WikiVoyage and WikiTravel activity

Swept in from the pub

I created a small tool that generates this output:

Stats for 20121017
Number of entries in recent changes edits (including deletions/blocks):
WV: 306
WT: 763
Number of article edits:
WV: 271
WT: 512

Here is the script, it is open source, forks and data maintenance are warmly welcome :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:41, 18 October 2012 (CEST)

Neat! I'm surprised, actually. Already make over half the edits that WT gets. (In the mainspace at least. We can assume the rest are spam edits) JamesA ^>talk 12:26, 18 October 2012 (CEST)

Last time I looked, very few of the edits currently being made on WT are travel information. It is promotional, spam, or reversions of same. I'd say one or two constructive edits per day. --Inas (talk) 00:05, 19 October 2012 (CEST)

Other language versions

Swept in from the pub

I have posted this here on en: instead of gen: or wts: since it's much more active here. What would happen to the other language versions that have not been imported? It has been mentioned that they would become read-only, but could they be moved to the incubator on Wikimedia instead? Also, a few more versions have gathered more than 5 supporters on gen:Interest in starting a new language version, should those wait until after the migration before being imported? –sumone10154^(talk) 21:38, 18 October 2012 (CEST)

All language versions would be transferred to the WMF. Versions without a community would be transferred to the incubator. I spoke with Hans that the versions which got a community recently would be build up directly in San Francisco. I will contact these communities to make some preparations. --Unger (talk) 16:40, 20 October 2012 (CEST)

I think nobody wants to go to Incubator and as admin there, please no. (nl-wikinews was already a mistake.) Let us all try to make a success of as much as language versions as possible, because working on Incubator isn't that easy and also with difficulties. I think that it would be made easy to set up a project, and after some time new projects can incubate in Incubator to get their own domain. Greetings - Romaine (talk) 22:59, 24 October 2012 (CEST)

String function not available after migration

Swept in from the pub

Erik Moeller wrote yesterday that "string functions can't be supported on Wikimedia Foundation sites, and templates using them will break after the migration." Therefore {{#len:}}, {{#pos:}}, {{#rpos:}}, {{#rsub:}}, {{#count:}}, {{#replace:}}, {{#explode:}}, and {{#urldecode:}} parser functions would not be available for use in templates. And these templates like will break. If found #explode in a lot of articles. --Unger (talk) 06:47, 25 October 2012 (CEST)

But the e-mail further said "Wikimedia Foundation is currently implementing Lua as a scripting language for templates which should offer a better approach in the long run. You can read more about this here: Lua". --Saqib (talk) 09:27, 25 October 2012 (CEST)

Indeed, but Lua isn't ready yet, so we need a stopgap. As far as I can tell, the only place we use #explode is Template:BASICPAGENAME; you can see the discussion that led to Inas's use of #explode on the talk page. We use that template to strip the parenthetical disambiguator from the pagename; this is used in our article templates (like Template:Country) and, most widely, in our routeboxes (this is so we get "Routes through Albany" instead of "Routes through Albany (New York)"). I still think there's gotta be a way to do this without using string functions; I'll ask around on Wikipedia. LtPowers (talk) 15:13, 25 October 2012 (CEST)

It's used in the Template:Routebox as well. -- DerFussi (talk) 18:20, 29 October 2012 (CET)

Only indirectly, through Template:BASICPAGENAME. See Template talk:BASICPAGENAME for a complicated workaround. LtPowers (talk) 19:57, 29 October 2012 (CET)

Wikivoyage Launch Banner

Swept from the Pub

Hey all,

Rogerhc worked on a bunch of options for the wikivoyage launch banner and posted them on Meta . There hasn't been a ton of feedback (no one but DocJames) and so I defaulted to making the one that Roger liked the most . Bringng over one of the others isn't impossible yet but if we want to we should do it soon.

I don't know what time people were expecting to actually 'launch' the banner campaign but I assume it was probably soon or in the past so I'm bringing over the translations now into the CN system and then will go home (I'm at the office now) and have a drink to give some time for anyone to give last concerns :). You are also welcome to find other meta admins to launch the campaign since once all of the translations are imported I'll put the banner into the campaign and get it ready to start whenever anyone checks enable.

tldr: Speak now or forever hold your peace :)

If there is anything you need me for the best thing would be to ping me on my talk page either here or on meta since that will shoot me an email. I also posted on the mailing list. I'll try to check here but have a bunch of things I'm dealing with at the same time so want to keep it easy :) .

James Jalexander (talk) 03:50, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I think we should be good to launch now. Great work by Roger on the banner. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:50, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm seeing the banner live on Wikipedia now, so the next few hours might be interesting. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:55, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Yup, it is live :) Jalexander (talk) 05:01, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Excited to see the banner on Wikipedia, but the wording seems odd. "This week we are launching Wikivoyage. Join us in creating a free travel guide that anyone can edit." The words make it seem like Wikipedia is launching a project. Is it too late to change the text?

• "The Wikimedia Foundation is excited to announce the launch of Wikivoyage! Join us in creating the free travel guide that anyone can edit." or
• "The Wikimedia Foundation is excited to launch its latest project—Wikivoyage. Join us in creating the free travel guide that anyone can edit."

I have copied this suggestion to m:Talk:Wikivoyage_2013/CentralNotice#Phrasing, which is where this discussion should go. Something should also be done to the m:Wikivoyage/Launch press release (either scrapped or fixed up for use). AHeneen (talk) 05:31, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The banner is live across (almost) all WMF projects - I've seen it on Wikidata. --Rschen7754 05:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey AHeneen, I'm not sure of the best spot for the conversation but I responded on meta since more of the conversation was already there. Everyone should go there if they have comments however :) Jalexander (talk) 06:23, 15 January 2013 (UTC).

Import issue

Swept in from the pub

It seems to me that the import bot is putting words in people's mouths, and altering email addresses to the point where they won't work, here: [1] I'm guessing this is a special case of a regex rule that works well in a lot of other situations. It seems ill advised to apply rules like this to user pages or talk pages, without careful review. Thoughts? -Pete F (talk) 03:26, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Heh, too late!

We just have to fix these things as we see them. I'll handle that page now. --Peter ^Talk 03:37, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Is it really too late? As I see it, this is a global problem where a bot got it horribly wrong, and it needs a bot to fix it. There are (at least) two ways that a bot could tell what needs reversion, any comment whose date tag shows it is older than the date we took our copy or any comment that exists on WT with identical wording except for WT/WV substitution.

Those substitutions should all be reverted and there are too many to do it without a bot. Pashley (talk) 21:01, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I disagree that the substitutions should all be reverted. We're the same project, just now with a different name, and all applicable versions with "Wikivoyage" should stay. I only think we should be reverting when things don't make sense, like mentions of Wikitravel Press, or the examples from Maj's userpage linked above. --Peter ^Talk 21:15, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that a basic notion in wiki-etiquette is not to change talk page discussion text, other than reverting obvious vandalism and archiving parts of overly long pages. The WT->WV substitution should never have been made on talk pages. We cannot just do a global revert because now there is newer discussion, but all changes to imported text should be reverted.

To me, this seems so obvious that I am amazed it even requires discussion; the only question is how it should be done. Pashley (talk) 21:26, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Again, I'm in full agree with Pashley (there's been times I really want to indent an improperly-indented comment (this one doesn't count, since I'm primarily responding to Peter), but even that's seemed like crossing the Rubicon. Peter, your logic doesn't really work, since they aren't the same project. They start with the same data and policies and have many of the same users, but pre-fork Wikitravel was a very different climate, which is why I never joined up. The fact that many Wikimedians have joined up (and plenty of Wikitravelers haven't) also means that despite the status-quo bias in written policy, you can expect unwritten assumptions to be different as well. Wikietiquette aside, many if not most discussions don't make sense in Wikivoyage. —Quintucket (talk) 21:36, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

(Note, I wrote this in response to Pashley at the same time as Peter's edit, and won't try to adjust it at risk of another edit conflict.) I agree. If possible, I think that pre-fork userpage edits on non-merged account and pre-fork talk page edits Import-bot edits should all be reverted, as changing Wikitravel to Wikivoyage only makes sense in the context of post-fork Wikivoyage.

In that note: Peter reverted me here for restoring pre-fork references to Wikitravel, claiming it doesn't apply here since it's still the same project. I strongly disagree. These discussions took place in a pre-fork context, and the changes are confusing. I made the edit after reading the discussion about discouraging forks and the unhappy climate at Wikivoyage, a non-thriving project, and was thoroughly confused until I remember this discussion. Other readers likely will be too, reading these substitutions not only out of context, but with context actually obscured by a bot, "putting words in people's mouths" as Pete F put it.

That said, while I'd like Peter to agree to re-revert his own edit (I follow a principle of not making the same revert twice with two different users, unless said users are obvious vandals) we really need a bot to do this globally. However there are plenty of people at Wikimedia who would be able and willing to do this. —Quintucket (talk) 21:28, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

There are legal reasons for the replacement. --Peter ^Talk 21:43, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Wherever there are legal reasons, they should be the exception, though, not the rule. In which situations are there no legal reasons for Wikitravel to have been substituted with Wikivoyage? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:46, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

There is ongoing litigation related to the use of the name Wikitravel in ways that could confuse readers into thinking that this site is endorsed or part of or whatever regarding Wikitravel. If this is something people want to take up (and I don't see any compelling reason to do so), please get in contact with WMF General Counsel. If you just have questions about this, please email me. For similar reasons, it is best for us not to discuss the ongoing litigation on wiki. --Peter ^Talk 21:50, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I will contact the WMF general counsel, but if they say that there's no issue, would you agree that refactoring user/talk pages is a bad idea in principle, and support efforts to fix the problem? —Quintucket (talk) 21:56, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Peter, I understand why we can't use the WT logo, nor refer to Wikitravel on policy pages (except the one about the fork), even if we wanted to, which we don't. But are there actual legal reasons for refactoring user comments, and if so, could you point me to the relevant discussion on MetaWiki? —Quintucket (talk) 21:52, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I assure you, there are, and would be happy to explain in greater detail by email. We should not, and I will not discuss this on-wiki. I'd be happy to explain why that is the case by email as well. --Peter ^Talk 21:55, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

As a general issue, separate from the legalities and specifics, I don't see a problem with minor refactoring of user comments, including fixing indentation levels. It's routine to do things like sweep discussions to more appropriate pages, move new comments on a talk page to the bottom of the page, and adjust the threading of comments made on a talk page. LtPowers (talk) 22:16, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

This is obviously a far less important facet of the issue than the foregoing, but for what it's worth: in many cases, the WT->WV substitution was also done in a rather artless manner. I've seen several cases where "Wikitraveller" (the non-US spelling, with two "L"'s) was converted to "Wikivoyageler". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:19, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Wait—are you saying we're not Wikivoyagelers? --Peter ^Talk 22:56, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Merge with Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage and Wikitravel?

This page now seems to have been rather superseded by Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage and Wikitravel and, to a lesser extent, Wikivoyage:User_account_migration - can we merge it? --Nick ^talk 03:57, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't know about merging them though, at least the last one - I think that the migration should be incorporated into a rename page, rather than having to ping bureaucrats. A year ago, there were more migration requests than rename requests, but that is no longer true. --Rschen7754 03:54, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Archived WT user page - an issue that I don't know where else to raise

Swept in from the pub

There appears to be a problem concerning User:Gamweb, who - I gather - has been a contributor here before the migration and would like to have the WT page of his deleted. I don't know any of the details and just wanted to alert the people who know about this and ask them what to do. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:00, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Since ( I believe ) we no longer facilitate the linking of WV and WT accounts, this is technically a new user with no right to blank the page of the previous WT user. The main issue I see is that we do not want to establish precedence of 'ownership' by WT users of their legally migrated CC contributions. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:18, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

I know, and agree, but this one is complicated by the presence of the user's real name on his (WT-en) userpage. He doesn't want it there, and he also seems confused and upset about the three different accounts he now has or appears to have, not to mention Wikitravel (which would be a fourth). Powers ^(talk) 16:45, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I think we should try to find a solution of keeping this user here and making him a constructive contributor. If he can successfully prove to be identical with his enWT user account (and I don't see any reason not to believe that), there should be a way to change the legacy use page in a way that addresses his concerns. Even if the merging of users is not possible any more, but that was - if I am not mistaken - never what he wanted in the first place. Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:28, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

If it's the w:WP:REALNAME that's the issue, wouldn't he only have to show (possibly by contacting the OTRS helpdesk, if it's necessary to take this to private e-mail) that he owns the legal name? K7L (talk) 18:15, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. Every reasonable effort should be made to accommodate him in a way that's satisfactory to him. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:16, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

User:Nurg has removed the user's real name from the imported (WT-en) page. That's an unusual step, and our German hosts raised issues in the past with modifying those templates. Are we okay with that? Powers ^(talk) 13:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The material is retained for author attribution purposes only; there is nothing in the CC license requiring we keep these user-space pages, and certainly it's not an issue as we have the user's permission in this case to remove it. K7L (talk) 14:36, 2 June 2015 (UTC)