Wikivoyage talk:National Parks Expedition

Proposal for a new "National Parks Expedition"

Swept in from the pub

As you can probably see from my collection of articles I've started, I'm a person who's interested in parks, specifically national parks. However, outside the US, some [smaller] countries of Europe, NZ and only recently Canada, most countries don't have park articles for even important parks. Ichkeul National Park is a pretty recent example. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Yet it only had an article about it this morning (AEDT). There's lot's of other similar cases out there, where a country's most important parks don't have an article, or are just plain lying stubby outlines, even if they aren't a UNESCO WHS.

Even so, when it comes to parks, it becomes more a situation where we tend to focus more on city articles, regardless of whichever country it's in instead of the usual, "English speaking or not". Have a look at pages like Finnish national parks, Indonesian national parks, New South Wales national parks or Israeli national parks. All of them just look a horrible red-link farm.

An I have to say, that our coverage of parks hasn't improved much either. This shows that there were only 47 guide parks in 2013, while there were 386 guide cities. Compare that to now, where we now have 624 guide cities, almost double the amount, while yet only 71 guide parks, keeping in mind that I wrote about a good 12 of these just in the last few months. So taking that out, that's only 59, which IMO, is little improvement to our park coverage. Even looking at the total number of park articles on the English Wikivoyage, it was 1,223 in 2013 and 1,447 today in 2021. And let's not forget that about a good half of that 200 new parks created within the 8 years is either a Canadian or Australian park article, probably leaving the other 100 elsewhere. I must say, that's not a huge improvement for eight years.

What I hope for this expedition to achieve is that there's a good coverage of national parks worldwide. I'd suppose significant state/territory/provincial/region parks can also be within this expedition. Examples of using this expedition would include having a list of parks that should ideally be covered, good resources for improving park articles etc. IMO, they don't need to be really high quality ones, just some basic travel info about them, along with the most important things to see and do in the park. That at least helps with having a good coverage of national parks worldwide on every corner on the globe. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:50, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

It would be nice to have better coverage. I tried to get a picture about some Caucasian and Russian parks, and it was difficult. The information often does a lot of assumptions about what the visitor should understand by themselves. I think we could overbridge that problem by our articles, if written in cooperation between somebody with local knowledge and somebody who sees the outsider's questions.

For Finnish National Parks, all national parks and most other destinations have links to the nationalparks.fi web site, which has good information, including on getting in by car or with public transport, landscape, lodging and sights. I think changing the redlinks to blulinks to mediocre articles isn't really worthwhile, as that would hide up to date and reasonably thorough information at the official site.

I suppose our articles can be valuable by having the information in a standard format, having a touch official sites cannot allow themselves, and get around some deficiencies at the official sites. Our article must be quite good to be worthwhile. I think more general advice, such as that in Finnish National Parks#Sleep, or Hiking in the Nordic countries gives more value to the work done. I would very much like feedback on the theme; what needs to be done to improve the articles (other than writing about the redlinked destinations)?

–LPfi (talk) 19:11, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I support an expedition for this purpose and would probably contribute to it. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 01:50, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Given there's no opposition to this expedition, Ima create Wikivoyage:National Parks Expedition soon. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:56, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

@LPfi, SelfieCity: finished setting it up. Was rather interesting to find out that the countries with the most park articles (the US, Australia, and Canada) have far more park articles than most other countries, although I have yet to check China and India though. I'm quite surprised that there's very few park articles under Europe (except the Nordic countries + UK), but it's probably because Europe has more cultural attractions rather than natural unlike North America or Oceania. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 21:55, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

National parks that are inaccessible to the public

Swept in from the pub

I've been wondering about this for some time, but in a nutshell, do we create articles national parks that are inaccessible to the public and just list in every single section that it's inaccessible, or do we just create a redirect for it? Pulu Keeling (Pulau Keeling) was one that I recently created although I'm sure noone will ever visit that park using Wikivoyage but it's not entirely inaccessible, but what about parks that are fully inaccessible? Should it just be mentioned in the relevant region article? Or would an article like this fail wiaa? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:38, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

For some context, this (url) is the park I was thinking of creating --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:38, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

If it's completely impossible for travellers to visit, I'd say there's no point in us having an article about it. We do have articles about some places that are highly restricted (e.g. Jarvis Island, where visitors require a permit from the US government), but even those are on the fringes of our scope in my opinion.

If it's unvisitable but you want to include it on a list of parks somewhere for completeness, that seems fine to me, like Hohokam Pima National Monument is listed (but not linked) at United States national monuments. —Granger (talk · contribs) 06:46, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

There are some parks that you could visit, but only for approved research. I think there are no parks you couldn't visit with the appropriate permit. I think writing articles about parks that cannot be visited without connections to a research institution should not be a priority, but neither should they be deleted once written. They are of niche value, but do no harm. A permit needed is not the criterium; I think all national parks in Russia require a permit, but ordinary tourists can get it by just applying and paying the fee. –LPfi (talk) 11:14, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

But even if you do manage to get a permit to go there, what would you do there? It's different for very isolated parks such as Pulu Keeling National Park (which I recently wrote, so fairly up-to-date), because you could theoretically go there, you just need a long permit and have to cop with all the photo restrictions. But some are just inaccessible and you can't visit it. What do you do with those? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:29, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I think that if you can't visit, it's good to mention it somewhere on Wikivoyage, but only to say that it exists and you can't go there (or that only researchers can go there, or whatever the situation is). I wouldn't create an article for a non-destination. I might mention it in a list of national parks, or in one of the nearest actual destinations.

Coincidentally, I wrote about an inaccessible location the other day: Greater Columbia#See. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:55, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Naming conventions for national parks breadcrumbed under huge cities

Swept in from the pub

This sort of situation is extremely uncommon (and almost nonexistent in most places), but currently, we don't have a preferred style on how national parks breadcrumbed under huge cities with districts should be named, but here's two examples:

• Adelaide/Belair National Park
• Lane Cove National Park

Both of them are breadcrumbed under cities, but both have different naming conventions. Adelaide/Belair National Park is a recently created one, as part of the new districts for Adelaide, but Lane Cove National Park has existed for quite a long time. I'd like to have a preferred style over this, but my preference would be that we use the one that is used for Adelaide/Belair National Park as similar to how we treat districts, but I'd like to get an opinion on how the community prefers it. Currently, the only one we have that's like a national park, is Manhattan/Central Park, but that's not a national park, and that's a city district article.

Also for extra context, Adelaide/Belair National Park is listed as one of the outer districts on Adelaide while Lane Cove National Park is not listed as one of the districts on Sydney. I'm mainly asking because of my recent move on Namadgi National Park to Canberra/Namadgi National Park as part of getting Canberra ready for districts. So, in summary, three options:

• Option 1 – national parks breadcrumbed under huge cities should keep its name (i.e. an article like Lane Cove National Park would stay Lane Cove National Park, not be renamed to Sydney/Lane Cove National Park)
• Option 2 – national parks listed in a city article's districts section would have the name of the huge city, and then the park's name (such as Adelaide/Belair National Park), but not parks that are not mentioned under the relevant city's districts (so something like Royal National Park will remain as it is)
• Option 3 – all national parks breadcrumbed under huge cities should use Hugecityname/Nameofpark

If this message was confusing, I'll try and simplify it. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:50, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

The first question, I think, is whether to list a national park as a district and breadcrumb it to the huge city, or have it as an independent Go next destination, breadcrumbed to the region. Would somebody go to the park other than as a side trip during a visit to the city? Often a park is part of a municipality otherwise covered in a (non-huge) city or rural region article. We could treat the parks in the same way also when they happen to be in a huge city.

The huge city offers the district infrastructure, so that we can have the park in a park article and still have it part of the huge city. If the huge city is a region of its own (which often makes sense, but I think it is against our guideline), there is no other region where to put the park. It is also odd to leave gaps in the city for the parks. The Namadgi National Park is at the border of the city and could thus easily be separated – that would provide an equally sensible border, and avoid having the park listed as both other destination and district – but as Camberra is listed directly under Australia, there is no region to breadcrumb to..

If we treat the park as a district proper, listed in and breadcrumbed to the huge city, it might be logical to use the same naming infrastructure – but why do we use the slash-naming? Is it because we'd otherwise pollute the mainspace with "Eastern suburbs" and the like, requiring disambiguation suffixes, and we prefer Helsinki/East over East (Helsinki), a sensible choice. But national parks usually have unique names, which already are long because of the "National Park" suffix. What advantage does the slash naming offer? It requires a redirect. Would anybody search for the park with the slashed name? I think we could treat the national parks as special cases.

–LPfi (talk) 12:39, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure about why we use the slash naming but I think it dates back to Wikitravel, but I can't seem to find where. Regarding the national parks I mentioned, these are not the only ones as there are some others too (like Heathcote National Park, Sydney Harbour National Park, Kamay-Botany Bay National Park, Malabar Headland National Park and there's plenty of others that I didn't mention) but they all seem to be in Australia for some reason. The only other one that I can find that's even close to this is Rouge National Urban Park, but that's under the Greater Toronto Area so that doesn't exactly count. So that leaves Nairobi National Park as the only one. As to specifically Namadgi, it is a part of Canberra (country Canberra), so I think breadcrumbing under CBR makes sense but I'm don't have an opinion about the others. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 13:10, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

In general, I like the idea of detaching national parks from individual cities. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Okay, but what do we do with Canberra/Namadgi National Park? The next level region up that's not a city is the country article. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:22, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

• Option 1. The other options add unnecessary information in the article title. Ground Zero (talk) 19:58, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
• Sometimes a national park is entirely within the borders of a city, and treating it as a district makes sense (you may have to sleep in the city). Other times a national park is entirely disjunct from any city, and treating it as an independent destination makes sense (you may sleep in the park during a multi-day visit). There may also be parks with more than one adjacent or internal city, Reality is not compelled to comply with style preferences, so style must be flexible to accommodate reality. So does the "can you sleep there" rule apply? What if the vast majority of visitors do not sleep there, but a few can and do? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 04:55, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

In my opinion the first syntax is wierd also for the district. It was created more than 10 years ago, before the breadcrumb extension was created. That syntax, that do not add any added value, has been completely replaced by the standard one in both it:voy and fr:voy. --Andyrom75 (talk) 14:34, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Interesting to know. I can see the value in keeping the current system tho, not because of any technical reasons, but it comes to how disambig pages are handled. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:57, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

In case of disambig, we apply the standard rule of any wiki "title (disambig)", in this case "district (city)". --Andyrom75 (talk) 17:20, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Further discussion

It seems there's clear consensus to leave the current articles of parks inside cities that don't have the name of the huge city alone, but it seems that taking it on a case my case basis of the current three parks that have that sort of naming convention and there seems to be a mixed opinion on whether to keep them under cities or detach them from cities. For the three, I'll give a brief overview and perhaps it can be decided:

• Adelaide/Belair National Park – more a popular city park about 10 km (6.2 mi) from its CBD (downtown). For me, it doesn't really make sense to move that name given it is a direct district of Adelaide.
• Adelaide/Adelaide International Bird Sanctuary National Park—Winaityinaityi Pangkara – more on the very outer ends of Adelaide and most of it would probably be better kept as its own article than a district, and takes quite a long time to get there. I think its very long name also makes it a reason to move the page.
• Canberra/Namadgi National Park – takes up about 47 percent of the Australian Capital Territory. It is one of my proposed districts of Canberra, and regarding the breadcrumbs, the next region up is the country article.

If I had to give my preferences, I'd say keep the first and the third one as they are, but rename the second. Any other comments? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:05, 11 February 2022 (UTC) --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:05, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Are marine parks a violation of our bodies of water policy?

Swept in from the pub

I created Great Australian Bight Marine Park today, but was wondering whether it and marine parks in general violate the bodies of water policy. We have very few articles about marine parks, and the only one that's at guide status is the Great Barrier Reef, but that's a region article, not a park article so that doesn't really count. But from Wikivoyage:Bodies of water, "Some regions or for that matter towns are named after bodies of water. These articles aren't about water, they are about the inhabited area on and around the water, with all the sorts of things that make a destination article-worthy." However, marine parks are 100 percent in the water, and so the only thing that can really be added is about recreational activities available.

So, should the bodies of water policy be adjusted to say that marine parks are allowed, or do marine parks violate the bodies of water policy? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 02:41, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

The bodies of water policy basically amounts to "Don't create an article about a body of water unless it's viable as a destination, travel topic or itinerary article." Do you think you can make this into a viable travel article? If not, make it a "Do" listing in the most appropriate place or handle it some other way that seems most useful to travellers - and if there is no way that's useful, it might not even bear mentioning. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:33, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

A minimum requirement would be that there is at least one organized hospitality venue. There is one for this marine park. /Yvwv (talk) 02:45, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

That makes sense, as it doesn't make sense to have an article about just the marine life, reefs. Would listing dive sites count? (it's not an organized venue, but still something to see) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 05:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think that requirement always makes sense. My examples are all in the Philippines.

The two parks (one marine) at Olango_Island#See are handled as listings in the island article and the marine reserve around Apo_Island is just mentioned in text, not even a listing. That's fine since for any of them you'd stay & eat on the island, or perhaps in some nearby area.

Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park, though, certainly deserves its own article even though there is no accommodation & nearly all visitors come on live-aboard boats. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a national park, a popular destination, & on several lists of the world's top dive sites. Pashley (talk) 05:42, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Can you sleep there (and would you) allows for sleeping in a tent. How would a boat be different? If it's a place where you'd stay several days it is probably worth an article. Anyway, I'd say the traveller comes first: if you go there from several locations, you'd otherwise need to link one of those articles for the description, and the article may be overwhelmed or the long description otherwise feel inappropriate. Linking a park article instead would be much more elegant, even if you have to link the surrounding cities for lodging. –LPfi (talk) 10:21, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Sleeping there in a tent or on a boat are a bit different. On a boat there may be people sleeping during transit, and being able to sleep there on a boat would basically open up all navigable waters. I would suggest if there are marinas or recognised anchorages then the sleep test becomes more relevant. (commenting as someone who has slept there on a boat in a lot of places that might be considered a bit over the top as destinations). As an example I have slept on a boat at anchor at the Diving the Poor Knights Islands and Diving at Three Kings Islands in New Zealand, both of which are marine parks, where you are not allowed to land without a special permit (if I remember correctly). And there are no land facilities of any kind for travellers. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:08, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

It really isn't much different from using a tent, in countries where wild camping is allowed. You can put up your tent more or less anywhere in Finland (outside towns, yards, fields and protected areas), but that doesn't make any level patch a destination. You should have the attractions too, it is just that being able to sleep in the boat allows us not to use the nearest town as "destination", when people in fact wouldn't go there. –LPfi (talk) 14:32, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. The real situation is more complex than the basic sleep rule can usefully handle. There are legitimate edge cases, and while we probably each think we can recognise a legitimate destination when we see it, it is unlikely that we would all agree on all cases. There is also the distinction between destinations and travel topics to consider, and where the line gets drawn between them. There is also the matter of how bodies of water and marine parks are normally defined. A marine park is generally defined independently of the body of water it is in, with a whole set of rules for what may be done there that do not apply in the surrounding areas. These may include anchoring and overnight stays, which may be a reasonable basis for considering whether they make it as a destination.

Consider my previous examples; Poor Knights, and Three Kings. In both cases there are anchorages and one can overnight at them. There is nowhere else to sleep in the marine park. Another example could be Table Mountain National Park Marine Protected Area, which you can also anchor in overnight, but it is also legally administered as part of the Table Mountain National Park, which has visitor accommodation, and which is entirely within the Cape Town Metropolitan Area, which has sleeping accommodation for over 4 million residents, and is a major tourist destination, with several districts. Would we consider the TMNPMPA a destination or an attraction?, a place to go, or a thing to do or see? Most visitors will sleep on land and make day trips to some parts of the MPA, but some might not, and may sleep overnight in an anchored boat in the MPA. Then there is the Tsitsikamma National Park and its MPA, where there are land based tourist accommodations, but no safe anchorages. Boat based visitors to the MPA either use a boat launched in the MPA or navigate in from harbours or launch sites outside the MPA on day trips. In this case the park as a whole is a legitimate destination, but I would say the MPA itself would not be one. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 02:34, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

In passing, I have sailed through the Great Australian Bight Marine Park, and may have been asleep for all or part of the time. I had no idea it was there, and we were way out to sea where anchoring was not an option. The spinnaker blew out in that general area. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 02:50, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Banner

I know I created the banner in December, but rethinking about it, it looks far too US-centric and probably not even the best example as a banner since it is merely an entrance sign of Glacier NP. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:23, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Banner 0

Banner 1

Banner 2

Banner 3

Banner 4

+3. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 05:44, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I replaced the banner, but suggestions are more than appreciated. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:18, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I think you chose best out of the 4. Mrkstvns (talk) 19:33, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Hong Kong

Should Hong Kong's country parks and marine parks be part of this expedition? The dog2 (talk) 16:21, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

@The dog2: Yeah, why not? HK has some beautiful nature out there and it would be great if we could cover it here. (ps: thanks for the addition on the country stats section!). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:21, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure if any of them are big enough to warrant separate articles, but Hong_Kong#Nature has a summary of all the country parks and marine parks in Hong Kong, so I wonder if this is sufficient for inclusion "List of countries/territories with an article for all national parks" section of the expedition page. The dog2 (talk) 23:35, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I’d assume so. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 01:57, 7 March 2024 (UTC)