Wikivoyage talk:Plunge forward

Archived:

• Southend-on-Sea → Southend
• Jau National Park → Talk:Jau National Park

So, somewhat outside the spirit that this page is supposed to encourage, I removed an appended ", man!" from the end of the article. I didn't really grok what it was about, and it felt a wee bit insulting -- as if "Plunge forward" is a lot of hippy-dippy bullshit. Maybe that wasn't the intention -- maybe it was.

I think it might be a fair criticism, though, even if it is kind of sideways. I've tried to make Plunge forward an antidote to the daunting and rigid structure in the Manual of style, and really encourage people to contribute. Some folks have seemed intimidated by the structure, and I wanted to say, hey, go ahead, do what you want, someone else will clean up the mess. It might be a little too cheerleaderish, though. --(WT-en) Evan 16:54, 28 Jan 2004 (EST)

---

I am all for editing, but I am concerned about how we honor the Creative Commons license. I went ahead and boldly edited Pikes Peak today, but is it enough for "attibution" for MediaWiki to store the diffs between (WT-en) Karen Johnson's original and my edits? <>< (WT-en) tbc

Yes, absolutely. I'm working on some tools to add on-page attribution blocks to articles, but the history listings are fine for now. We have to give attribution as best we can, and with wiki, we give attribution through history. --(WT-en) Evan 18:19, 1 Jun 2004 (EDT)

more info

Needs to tell some interesting facts.

Haraz named after Arabic word "Mahruz" i.e. the protected A Small sect, the Ismaili community still visable living in the region with tradition tracing back to the Fatimin dynesty. Culture carried over to India, the present seat of the da'awa. Natural Mild Narcotic Amphetamine stimulant Qat trees on steep slopes are being replaced back to traditional coffee trees by locals adhering to directive from the da'awa

Suggest someone more skilled than I create a disambiguation page so that queries can also reach a page for the Caribbean island of the same name.

Anyone know what this means?

idiom

Is this phrase idiomatic? One may plunge in, and one may lunge forward and press forward, but not plunge forward.

--What, haven't you ever seen anyone jump off a cliff before? Or a diving board? If you don't plunge somewhat forward at least, you whack your head before you hit water. I'm still not sure how this exactly applies to Wikivoyage though.--

I would perhaps say "dive in"? However, the article explains what is meant by "plunge forward" so I'm not sure this is a big deal 213.105.6.71 18:43, 31 March 2012 (EDT)

I rather like "dive in." But changing this would be too much hassle—it is linked in too many user talk pages! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 19:18, 31 March 2012 (EDT)

Why bother? This was launched with over 25,000 articles.

Doesn't seem to be anything left to do.

Nice of you to say so, but there are so many places uncovered. So many of those 25,000+ articles are just skeletons. We've had several hundred pieces of travel information added in just the last hour or so. Move away from the larger centres, and look at some niche areas that you might know about. Look at common questions people ask about destinations, and make sure we have the answers in our guides! --Inas (talk) 10:16, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

A lot of the initial page content seems to have been generated by bots rather than human beings. I think that the more you look the more stuff to fix that you'll see. I found that the Stonehenge article had been illustrated by a completely incorrect picture for example. 62.254.222.161 10:26, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

No, it is all human generated - not bots. Some of our image links were misdirected as a migration artifact. See Photo hunt for more. Thanks for your help in fixing up any of these errors you may notice. Stonehenge is fixed now. --Inas (talk) 10:29, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah I see, thanks for pointing me at that. Blakkandekka (talk) 13:59, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

A couple of years ago, earth.org, tried and failed to start a user written travel guide webpage. It failed. They offered "remote work," but no real pay. The same people seem to now be using the web address to promote Yoga and open culture. cactusmitch

There is a huge amount of work to do here. Ignoring destinations and districts that should have their own articles but don't (which I guess number in the thousands) there are hundreds of potential travel topics to add. And of course there are thousands of articles that need banners, maps, formatting fixes and more than 20,000 articles that need to get to Star status. Gizza ^(t)(c) 04:51, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

People need travel guides. Having an online one is really useful. SoftAngelFromHell (talk) 02:00, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Time to tone it down?

Just re-reading this, and it's a little crazy. Haven't read it in years. Anyone against toning it down a bit? People jumping immediately into page moves and redistricting based on "plunging forward"without prior discussion is a bit chaotic  :) – cacahuate ^talk 01:27, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia's w:Wikipedia:Be bold policy is very similar to ours, but they add some caveats that would make sense in our article, particularly:

• Don't get upset if your bold edits get deleted.
• Do not edit recklessly
• "Although editors are encouraged to be bold in updating articles, more caution is sometimes required when editing pages in non-article namespaces."

-- Ryan • (talk) • 01:35, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

totally - and something about not making large changes especially to region structures and districting of cities without discussion and building a consensus – cacahuate ^talk 07:08, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree this page needs to be toned down and doesn't reflect how site processes have been applied in practice. It should stress more that making organizational changes can't just be plunged forward on but need to be backed by consensus first. This should also count for the main namespace (e.g. creating districts or regions). Globe-trotter (talk) 01:42, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I took a stab at making this change: Wikivoyage:Plunge forward#...but don't be reckless! Given the article subject I thought it was appropriate to simply plunge forward rather than proposing a draft, but as always if anyone disagrees please revert and let's discuss. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

As I mentioned on your user talk page, I think your changes are terrific! Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:12, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Add note to all pages to encourage readers to start editing

Swept in from the pub

We want to recruit new contributors. For readers entering WV through the home page, there is a prominent note near the top of the page that "anyone can edit" this travel guide. For readers entering WV at a specific article (eg, coming from a search engine), the only really obvious encouragement to edit is the "Edit" buttons, which don't indicate that anyone can edit. Can we add a note to appear reasonably prominently on all pages to notify readers that even they can edit, and to encourage them to do so? Nurg (talk) 02:16, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

There's already a note to plunge forward in the status box at the end (such as {{usablecity}}). K7L (talk) 04:50, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Is this a problem with our readers not being motivated enough to contribute, or is this simply a problem with there not being enough readers? It seems like it's common knowledge that Wikipedia articles can be edited easily by anyone who happens across one, and it seems equally intuitive for anyone who happens across our site that it works along the same lines as Wikipedia as far as how to edit a page. I'd love to know if there's a way to find out how many of Wikipedia's readers have ever edited an article, and compare that with our readers. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:54, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

It is unfortunately not very common knowledge that "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" can actually be edited by anyone. The WMF did some simple surveys (a few years ago – typical online donors, I think), and a surprising percentage of them were unaware that they really could edit the page.

A number of wikis run a more or less permanent MediaWiki:Sitenotice that encourages people to edit. I believe that there are ways to show these only to certain user groups (e.g., logged-in editors). There are probably some psychological 'tricks' that we could try to make it more effective. To give a not very relevant example, people respond much better to a "limited time offer" than to "whenever you feel like it". (This explains the marketing approach for a local furniture store that I remember from years ago: they had a heavily advertised "going out of business" sale that continued for a remarkable number of years.) If we wanted to build something around that idea, we could entice people with a "limited time offer" to suggest their favorite restaurant to our editors – by using the "Add listing" button and filling it in correctly (except, of course, we want them to do it all the time, not just today/this week/for a limited time). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:02, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Interesting post. I definitely agree with including a message on every page (except user pages and perhaps policy pages and the main page?) that it can be edited by anyone. However, as much as what you say about "limited time offers" makes psychological sense, I can't see a Wikimedia organization adopting that kind of manipulation tactic. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:16, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

As the majority of web users today are using mobile devices, I think some easy to use edit tools in mobile mode would be productive. --Traveler100 (talk) 10:38, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

In the Hebrew Wikivoyage this particular opportunity to get more active editors has been discussed some years ago and we decided to add the following template to all of the hebvoy articles that are missing a significant amount of content...

Please help expand this article as much as possible by adding translated content from the corresponding English Wikivoyage article.

...unfortunately, even though the hundreds of thousands whom stumbles across our site know now quite well that their help is needed, to me it seems that this measure hasn't contributed to any significant number of new editors choosing to participate. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 17:12, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I like the idea of some sort of message on pages encouraging edits, and I like WhatamIdoing's suggestion of a simple, "add your favourite restaurant" feature. Maybe it could even be something as simple as a message saying something like "Is this page missing something? Leave a note here, and it will be added", which then gets readers to use a feature where they leave a note of what is missing, like "Joe's Restaurant, www.joesrestaurant.com", which doesn't add anything to the article, but something like a <!-- commented out --> message on the article, and gets another editor to add it (with templates, and coordinates), and then the editor who added it leaves a message for that reader thanking them and encouraging them to edit other places. This way, the reader doesn't have to take ages finding all the contact details for the place, and don't have to spend time worrying about the write syntax/code for adding the place. I haven't spent ages thinking about that idea, and I'm not sure whether that would be able to work; but a simple way of getting readers to contribute would be good.  Seagull123  Φ  17:39, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

The flip side of your suggestion, User:Seagull123, is that by pointedly encouraging users to do something other than posting listings, we could be creating a lot of work for other editors. Do you volunteer to be in charge of converting most of the hidden text into templated listings? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:31, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I think that adding a new listing is probably the easiest thing to do on the site, which is why I was thinking about that.

ויקיג'אנקי, I think that the problem with "Please help expand this article" is that most readers will assume that it's talking to someone else. I suspect that we would get a better response if we said something like

This is Reader Recommendation Week at Wikivoyage! At designated parts of every article, there are links labeled 'Add listing'. Do you have a favorite restaurant, hotel, or other attraction that's not on our site? If so, then please click the 'Add listing' button and fill in the form. Our regular editors will look over your contributions, and if it meets our standards, then it will be accepted. Thank you for sharing your favorites with us!

This kind of approach makes it clear that readers themselves can do this, which is a much bigger hurdle than it should be. (Also, we could set some CSS to make the 'Add listing' button in bold-face, rainbow-striped, blinking text, or make it say "Reader suggestion box" or something instead. This is a really huge problem.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:18, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree. More people editing, means more people can travel safer. Also, we should encourage making new articles, as that is very helpful. SoftAngelFromHell (talk) 02:04, 28 August 2018 (UTC)