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Spanish language varieties, French language varieties etc.

We have - and I love it - an exhaustive article on English language varieties. While of course English is the most popular (second) language and a lingua franca worldwide, what about educating tourists and travel(l)ers about varieties in French, Spanish, and maybe other languages they might encounter? In (rural) Latin America, you might not get far with either British or American English or any other variety of English, for example,... Aren't the varieties of Spanish (Spanish Spanish v. Latin American Spanish v. Mexican Spanish) or French (France French v. Quebéc French v. Afro-French?) as significant as the differences between the English language varieties? What do you think?

Even within Germany, no bigger than the state of Montana, we have dialects and varieties of German considered quite significant. For example, somebody who speaks a little German might not understand Sächsisch as spoken in rural Saxony or Schwäbisch as, for example, spoken in Allgäu. Heck, even I didn't know a few Saxonian words like addeln or bransen.

Another example: Few from outside Berlin would use Schrippe for what is in standard German called Brötchen - Baden-Württemberg etc. use Weckle/Weckla/Weckli and Bavaria Semme(r)l, while Rundstück is used around Hamburg,... Pm147-Sm152 (talk) 15:01, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

And if you include Austria and Switzerland, it will get even more colourful (or more complicated). In Austria - and nowhere else - some call a tomato Paradeiser as opposed to standard German Tomate. What most call Johannisbeeren are Ribiseln in Austria. There are several different terms for a carrot throughout Germany and Austria - Möhre, Mohrrübe, Karotte, Gelbe Rübe, Wurzel etc.

In Switzerland a sign can read Fehlbare werden verzeigt - a sentence not even understood by most Germans. It means that those who do whatever is banned on the sign will be angezeigt, i.e. reported to the police/authorities.

I don't know, however, how significant the differences between Spain's Spanish and Argentinan or Peruvian or Mexican Spanish are. Pm147-Sm152 (talk) 15:06, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I think we have different phrasebooks for some varieties of some languages, e.g. Brazilian Portuguese phrasebook or Lebanese Arabic phrasebook, and I see no reason why there can't be one or multiple phrasebooks for Spanish varieties (as long as they are different enough from each other to warrant separate phrasebooks). The reason for the existence of the English language varieties article is, I think, because you can't expect to have an English phrasebook in an English-language website. Vidimian (talk) 15:15, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I think we should expand at least for the most common(ly encountered) languages from a "phrasebook" article to a "X language varieties" article. Is it correct that Arabic is more like the family of Romance languages than a single language, but seen as a single language for (mainly) religious(?) reasons? Pm147-Sm152 (talk) 15:35, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I can't speak Arabic, but AFAIK, yes it's a continuum of varieties spoken from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Oman, but its modern standard is still actively spoken somewhere (Saudi Arabia), so its analogue in the Romance continuum would be more like Italy still speaking Latin, the other Romance speakers getting educated in Latin despite having vernaculars significantly drifted from it and being able to understand/speak it with varying fluency. I think there is also a nationalistic angle involved in considering Arabic a single language — not all Arabs are Muslims. Vidimian (talk) 16:31, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Another approach to the travel-relevant local words different from the standard variety is to note them in the "Talk" sections; for an example, see Austria#Talk. Vidimian (talk) 15:21, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes and we also have a Swiss-German phrasebook. We used to have separate ones for European Spanish and Latin American (now there's just one, with a short section mentioning there are differences). But let's just say if you're confident in your tourist-level Spain Spanish, talking out of my own experience, that confidence will be gone in a few minutes off the plane in Buenos Aires. There are also noticeable differences in smaller languages like Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian, though mostly related to pronunciation and mostly a thing in rural areas. --Ypsilon (talk) 15:25, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Oops! There are definitely differences in Norwegian. In Troms, I hardly notice they don't speak Swedish, while in Bergen, I am lost. And people from Helsinki commonly don't understand anything when confronted with the Närpes dialect. Norwegians are good at understanding dialects, as everybody there uses theirs, and in Närpes people will (try to) speak standard Swedish when somebody from southern Finland enters, but that doesn't change the fact that the dialects are different.

What matters, though, is whether or not the locals can adjust their speech such that the traveller can use their school German or their Hermod (or whatever app is used nowadays) Spanish to communicate with locals. If there are a few key differences, tell about them, if the differences are too big, warn and create the separate phrasebook.

–LPfi (talk) 16:24, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

And speaking of Spanish, there's no single "Latin American Spanish". There are many varieties of Spanish in Latin America than can differ quite substantially from each other. Argentinian Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Caribbean Spanish and so on all differ from each other significantly. And in say, Colombia, there are multiple varieties of Spanish, so someone from Bogota doesn't speak the same way as someone from Cartagena.

And with regard to Arabic, there's also slight differences between how Muslims and Christians speak Arabic. For instance, Muslims refer to Jesus as "Isa", while Arab Christians call him "Yasu". The dog2 (talk) 17:26, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikimania 2023

The Wikimania is started. Tonight is the opening ceremony. I will do a presentation tomorrow about how we have integrated Wikivoyage at voy/de. Most presentation are live streamed as far as i know. Is somebody here in Singapore as well? Are the other things, problems I should talk about with somebody here? -- DerFussi 04:24, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Enjoy dining out in Singapore, one of the best cities to eat in in the world! Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:11, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Have fun and be safe. If you can take pictures, please do! —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:13, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I will. My telegram chanel is public (but German) @Khmerfreak. But more travel related. Some more at Instagram (also: Khmerfreak). But I am sure commons will have a lot of pictures then. -- DerFussi 07:22, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Danke. For those of us who don't have smartphones, I hope you're willing to share on Commons. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:05, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Most photos from the event will end up under c:Category:Wikimania 2023. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:24, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

History section of countries and other destinations

Articles of continents and large countries tend to be lengthy; in particular the history section. Historical travel articles have been created, mostly ad-hoc, to describe the history of a country or a continent, a historic country, or a historic period, with relevant destinations. The Russia article is a case study, in which the history section is subject to controversy and edit wars, not least because of current events. We can consider to detail Russian history in Russian Empire and Soviet Union, while slimming down the history section of the Russia article; see Talk:Russia. The Europe article used to have a long history section which now goes in history of Europe. Should we have a general policy for history section of destinations? /Yvwv (talk) 11:46, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

wv:sections says "Keep in mind that all of this information should be useful for travellers. For example, the 'history' section should not compete with ample Wikipedia articles, but help the traveller to link specific places and events to a larger historical period." Wikivoyage:Country article template says "The country's history in a nutshell. When in doubt about including a date or event, ask yourself: Is it relevant to the average traveller?"

Neither of these provides clear guidance. What do you suggest? Ground Zero (talk) 12:02, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Seems to me like a very clear guidance, if you ask me. I would assume most of the controversities are completely irrelevant to the traveller — is Ukraine Russian or Polish taking this or that historical event ... no traveller cares! One could still leave information on "this was the former seat of KGB".

So, I would suggest just skipping and removing such content, also for the sake of maintenance.

But maybe I seeing things too simple.

Cheers Ceever (talk) 17:32, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm actually a fan of these sections, which help me a lot to connect the dots. (But honestly a history section in the length of the one for the Russia article scares me, and I haven't given it a complete read over, not even once.)

I think this is one of the cases where the basic wv:ttcf principle should prevail. If the average, non-history enthusiast traveller should know about something, about how something came to be, note it down. In lowest-level destination articles, I try to make a point of explaining a historical term that the reader will come across in the article body but can't be expected to know about in the "Understand" section, if it's generic to the destination and not to a single site. However, this isn't as easily clear-cut in higher-level articles such as countries and continents. Vidimian (talk) 18:41, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

yeah, about a month or two ago, we had consensus about the Christianity article being too long and overabundant in minutiae and in NEED of trimming down, especially the music section. Yet, the article has only grown bigger and overdetailed and a TRUE BORE to read and copyedit. I've given up about it, actually. Ibaman (talk) 19:04, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I guess what that tells us is that clarifying the policy or getting a consensus to trim an article doesn't solve the problem. Only editing the article does. If no-one is willing to to that, discussing it is pointless. Ground Zero (talk) 19:24, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I think it is worth differentiating between the history of a country and that of a city (or small region like a county). If I want to know the history of a country, there are loads of alternatives - Wikipedia articles or books on the subject which are readily available.

However it takes more effort to find out the history of a city, as I am unlikely to see books on a city's history before I get there. It is much easier to see a clear link between the history and what is there on the ground - there are castles to repel invaders in 1234, and blocks of apartments due rebuilding after the 1955 fire. AlasdairW (talk) 20:51, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia allows nesting of information by creation of sub-articles; history articles can be budded off by periods, regions, themes and peoples. Wikivoyage however has the aforementioned TCF policy, which requires a new article to be of some use for a traveller. Articles such as the Russian Empire and Soviet Union make sense as thematic guidebooks, and we could consider articles such as Medieval Slavic kingdoms; a Wikivoyage article on the theme of Russian Federation's history under Putin would however make less sense. Articles created in good will, such as African-American history has been questioned for their merit as travel articles. While the historical travel article collection is a source of pride which elevates us above Wikitravel and Tripadvisor, we should certainly keep Wikivoyage's profile as a travel guide, not a second Wikipedia. /Yvwv (talk) 21:20, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but why are we not intervening then? If there was a consensus then let's live it and ruthlessly cut the article down. And if some people still blow up things, then lock the article.

@Ibaman: Just plunge forward and make it stop. I would guess you have most of our backing.

Cheers Ceever (talk) 15:15, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

For me, it's not about length, but about relevance and making sure it is not a mini-encyclopedia. If it helps travellers know better about the destination before visiting it, then by all means it should be included. If it's just encyclopedic fluff, then it shouldn't. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 23:09, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree that some of the articles have History sections that would fit better into an encyclopedia than a travel guide (just see Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo#History, and compare that to the article's See, Do and Eat sections). Such a section can be split off into a "History of X", but such an article should preferably also have section(s) with listings of places where historical events have taken place. AlasdairW also has a good point that city and perhaps region articles can have longer History sections, because this usually relates to individual sights and events whereas a country's history tends to be on a more general level. --Ypsilon (talk) 05:02, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Most history articles seem to be a history/background section, followed by a list of destinations.

I wonder whether (using DRC as an example) it would be more interesting to take the sections of history (e.g., Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Congo Crisis, Mobutu, First and Second Congo Wars, Modern DRC) in a history article, and add the usual 7±2 listings to them.

We have just started creating articles on African history. Ancient African nations is a very generalized article which can surely be budded to more local articles. Colonial Congo would be a suitable scope for an article being a notoriously cruel chapter of European imperialism in Africa; however, the post-colonial governments have made efforts to eradicate colonial heritage, and it might not be appealing as an itinerary. /Yvwv (talk) 16:59, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I suspect that my husband would be very happy to find a "History of <any country>" with a half-dozen recommendations in a ===World War II=== section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:39, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

FYI: 1/3 of Japanese are "never travelers"

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/japan-never-traveler-culture-cmb/index.html —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:15, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I wonder what the statistics would be for other countries. Certainly I've met Canadians who've never been out of the country. Pashley (talk) 00:00, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

My fellow Americans are allergic to passports. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:19, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Allergic, and/or they lack the vacation time and money to travel abroad? It's not an accident that Europeans travel to other countries so much more often, and Australians have a culture of international travel because they are effectively on a continent by themselves and there's been a traditional tie to the British Isles that the U.S. has lacked for a long time because of the much longer history and circumstances of our independence. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

The article said that 20% of Japanese people have passports, and I think about twice as many American adults have valid passports (though maybe not quite that many between the pandemic and current passport processing delays). About 70% of American adults have visited a foreign country.[1] A day trip or a weekend in Mexico or Canada is pretty common in some areas. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but most of the country is nowhere near close enough to the border for that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:13, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Passports are very common here in Germany, though I can't really say a lot about other countries' passport habits. However, within a twelve-hour drive, I can get to more than ten foreign countries from my home: All nine neighbouring countries of Germany plus Liechtenstein, Hungary, Italy, San Marino, Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, Bosnia and possibly Spain, Serbia, Montenegro and/or Romania. While from the US I've heard and read that a twelve-hour drive doesn't even get you out of some states. I doubt you could reach, for example, New Mexico or Alabama from Nebraska in twelve hours. Pm147-Sm152 (talk) 00:52, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Driving across Texas is 10-ish hours, the long way. And railroads are virtually nonexistent. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:05, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

The part of the Trans-Canada Highway in Ontario about 1500 km. There are places in northern Canada a long way from any border; e,g. Going south from Yellowknife to to the US border is something like 2000km, 1250 miles. Alaska might be closer, but still a considerable distance. Pashley (talk) 04:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

There are also parts of the United States in the South Pacific, of course. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:25, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Only American Samoa, tho (excl. uninhabited islands/military bases). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:12, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Correct: American Samoa and Jarvis Island —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Ikan, most of the country doesn't live close to the borders, but quite a lot of the people do. Southern California has ~23 million people near Mexico. The Pacific Northwest has ~8 million people within an easy day's drive of Canada. Another several million people live in western Texas. Almost all of the northeastern US (~57 million people) is within a few hours' drive of Canada; from New York City (~9 million people in the city proper) to Montreal is a six-hour drive. Chicagoland (~10 million) to Toronto is an eight-hour drive; Detroit (another million) is the halfway point.

Taken altogether, I'd guess that more than third of Americans live within an 8-hour drive of a neighboring country. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:42, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I responded to "A day trip or a weekend in Mexico or Canada is pretty common in some areas." 8 hours' drive each way is damn far to go for a weekend, let alone a day trip, unless maybe you're a Texan - they're used to driving long distances. (Quite apart from the fact that many New Yorkers don't drive at all.) Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

As someone who does very long road trips (mine to Tasmania last summer was over 6,000 km), I can reasonably assure you, Ikan, that nobody drives 8 hours one way for a day trip (the most I've done for a day trip was 5 hours from where I live (Sydney) to Barrington Tops National Park, though it mainly terrain that added time, not distance). While everything is bigger in Texas (ofc, everyone knows that Texas is larger than the entire universe), I doubt even Texans drive that distance for weekend trips. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 04:59, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Well, I've known Texans to literally say: "That isn't far: it's only an 8-hour drive." My response was that if you drive 8 hours from New York, you can go through several states and end up in Virginia or Maine, and that we consider that a very long distance. But Texas is such a big state and people are just much more used to driving long distances there. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:44, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely. Distances are different in the plains states. For one thing, it's not a challenging type of driving.

Years ago, my husband worked for a place that kept summer hours, so everyone left work on Friday at 11:30 a.m. You could be 8 hours' away before sunset, spend Friday night, all day Saturday, Saturday night, and all of Sunday morning at your destination, and still be home in time for a good night's sleep before getting back to work at 7:30 a.m. on Monday. (The early start was the main downside to the summer hours.)

Where I live now, some people think that driving for half an hour (e.g., to a specialty store or to a medical appointment) is verging on the unreasonable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:51, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I take your point. So it's not only Texans who consider an 8-hour drive not long, but what you're saying is that people in any of the Plains states (like the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma) also feel that way. Whereabouts (generally - of course I respect your privacy) do you live now? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:57, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm in California now. I understand that the views of driving vary by region within the state. One of my California-based colleagues lived in a mountainous/rural area and seemed to think little of driving an hour.

Perhaps it's based on what you're used to? When I lived in an exurb area decades ago, an hour's drive was not surprising (my optometrist was 35 miles/50 km away, for example, and it never occurred to me to look for someone nearer), and we would drive 12 hours in a single day on a trip. Now I think that more than an hour's drive is a serious imposition, and I'm not sure if I could sit in a car for four hours straight. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Without a doubt it's based on what you're used to. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:27, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

As someone who's said that exact statement before, I'm guessing they mean it's not that long to drive 8 hours instead of flying? --22:35, 21 August 2023 (UTC)~ SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:35, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

FYI: $2 to cut a sandwich in half: The outrageous rip-offs targeting tourists in Italy

https://www.cnn.com/travel/outrageous-charges-targeting-tourists-in-italy —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:50, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately in Italy one may run into all sorts interesting extra fees like unofficial tourist taxes and surprising table rents at restaurants. --Ypsilon (talk) 21:12, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Not only Italy. I ran into something similar in Shanghai. Pashley (talk) 03:52, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Panama City Metro expansion

Line two now Aeropuerto metro station serves the airport please update accordingly!213.95.33.60 22:40, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikivoyage is the travel guide that anyone can edit – plunge forward (and update as accordingly)! SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:03, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Poor quality of page banners

Hi!

I'm interested to hear the opinion of more senior Wikivoyage editors regarding page banners and their quality. It seems to me that many banners, especially those of smaller countries, are rather old, outdated, and not of the best image quality.

In particular, Austria's banner, while of good quality, is badly cropped and has awkward composition; Czechia's banner is extremely soft and blurry; so is Croatia's; Ireland's banner (i.e. County Mayo's) is soft, has bad haze, and is tilted; Slovakia's banner is old and very soft; Romania's banner feels unhelpful and has distracting objects; et cetera. And that's not even mentioning regional banners.

Now, I'm not here to just complain! I have already created a couple new banners from nice, new pictures available on Wikimedia Commons. The reason why I'm leaving this post is to ask of others' opinions on these banners, and whether it would be appreciated of me to go on a banner-changing streak, to put it one way. If possible, I think it'd be best to try to find a nice banner of a region or a town of that particular country, and set the banner to that; if not possible (or suitable), a new banner might get made.

Again, I'm mostly here to ask for your opinions and blessing to do so - I feel like it would be rude of me to change banners that might have been here for years, for better or for worse. I mean, some of those pictures date back to the early 2000s!

Thanks! Soggy Pandas (talk) 23:58, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

@Sogga Pandas: None of these banners are set in stone – you can always propose another banner on the talk page and then list it on WV:RFC (see Talk:South Estonia as an example). If you feel another banner is better, please plunge forward and propose an alternative banner! --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 00:02, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I know they aren't - it's just that some of them feel almost like ancient artifacts! :P

One question, though - if a proposal to change a banner gets no responses in a reasonable amount of time, I hope it wouldn't be rude of me to go forward with the change anyway? Soggy Pandas (talk) 00:08, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I've often done the same (usually after 3 weeks), so, no, it definitely won't be rude. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:49, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Grumpy Wikipedian question

Hello. This sounds like, as the header noted, a question from a grumpy Wikipedian muttering but on Wikipedia we do it THIS way, and it kind of is. Why does wikivoyage not require references? Surely verifiability is desirable? Wikidata has references, wiktionary has quotations, etc. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 20:44, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

We value editor's first hand experiences of visiting somewhere. If you go to a restaurant and have a good meal, then say so in the listing. We encourage primary links to verify the facts - so you can check the address (and maybe the menu prices) of the restaurant on its own website, but we want to know that you found the food tasty but the service was slow. AlasdairW (talk) 21:03, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Couldn't someone make those things up though, to slander a business or cast aspersions on a town or promote a park, etc. etc. etc. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 21:04, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I think you'd be able to tell, no? And besides, it'd be difficult to find reliable sources for a lot of the information Wikivoyage provides. And on top of all that, if you were sourcing from 3rd party travel guides and whatnot, don't they get paid to put commercial stuff in as well? That's not necessarily an answer, just my thoughts :p Soggy Pandas (talk) 21:38, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

We do have policies on touting and negative reviews which attempt to address these concerns.

Thinking back to the time of paper books, encyclopedias usually included references (but not as many as Wikipedia because of space issues), but travel guidebooks rarely had them. Wikipedia has based its practises on those of encyclopedias and we have followed the practises of guidebooks.

For a travel guide it is important to be regularly updated, but this isn't possible if we have to wait for other published sources to come first. AlasdairW (talk) 21:52, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Our choice to Wikivoyage:Avoid negative reviews solves most of the problems about slander and casting aspersions.

If someone wants to promote a (single) specific attraction, that might actually be a good thing for the article. If you have a good experience with something, and your form of "promotion" looks like providing concrete, travel-specific information (e.g., "only free public toilets in town", "Let the kids play on the playground while your EV charges", "Don't miss the cream of asparagus soup"), then why wouldn't we want you to do that?

Something to keep in mind is that because this isn't the largest wiki in the history of the universe, we don't have tons of paid spammers dumping garbage on us. We Welcome business owners and Welcome tourism professionals. Business owners who update their own hours or prices mean less work for volunteers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:32, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

TLDR: have you seen any other travel guide with references? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:16, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I think the Touring Club Italiana guides had references in the introductory sections in which there was a scholarly essay that described the architecture, art, cuisine, etc. of, say, Tuscany, and specifically of a given city such as Siena, whose Palio horse race was also described in detail and historical perspective, or the Giostro dei Saracini in the introduction for the section on Arezzo, but I think even they did not have references for the listings of each building that mentioned who composed each canvass painting, fresco, sculpture, piece of intarsial work, pavement, stained glass and so forth in a given church or which architect created the overall building, if I remember correctly. But those guides were unusually scholarly, as you can tell from my descriptions. They had no listings for specific hotels or restaurants but did specify the things I mentioned for every building in each town and city in the region. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:17, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

The idea is that the claims made in this travel guide are verifiable by going there yourself. If I'm reading an encyclopedia article on magnetism and someone puts in some crazy woo about how magnets cure cancer, I shouldn't have to get cancer and try to cure myself of it with magnets: I should just see if there's a verifiable, reliable source and that this isn't original research. If I'm reading a travel guide and it says that "[x] is a great spot to see a sunset", then I can stand there and see the sun set. This guide is making practical (not academic) claims that are based around subjective experience. We include several objective factual statements ([place] drives on the right side of the road, [place] uses [currency], etc.) that should be fairly trivial to verify, but the bulk of the content is based on travelers going somewhere and telling us about it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:01, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

And that includes you, @Edward-Woodrow! Please consider updating a page for a place that you know. Even if you just go through listings, determine that nothing's changed since the last time, and click the button in the listing editor to mark it as up to date, that's really helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Review the Charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

I am pleased to share the next step in the Universal Code of Conduct work. The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) draft charter is now ready for your review.

The Enforcement Guidelines require a Building Committee form to draft a charter that outlines procedures and details for a global committee to be called the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). Over the past few months, the U4C Building Committee worked together as a group to discuss and draft the U4C charter. The U4C Building Committee welcomes feedback about the draft charter now through 22 September 2023. After that date, the U4C Building Committee will revise the charter as needed and a community vote will open shortly afterward.

Join the conversation during the conversation hours or on Meta-wiki.

Best,

RamzyM (WMF), on behalf of the U4C Building Committee, 15:35, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Autogeneration of the 'see/do' sections in regions (prototype)

Guys, I had the greatest idea........... :) I'm considering spawning some prototype code (as an alternative of the GPT approach), that would crawl region's sub-articles (i.e. mostly cities/parks/...) and find all the see/do listings there. Then it'd sort the listings acc. to the respective wikipedia article # of views, and could put the top 9 into the region. Even though for many regions (such as Jutland) this would IMO be very beneficial, I don't plan any immediate integration into WV. But if you see some better way to rank the listings (based on the data we can get from WP/WD - without crawling google etc.), please comment. We'll see what comes out of this... -- andree 07:11, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

I have two concerns: (1) It's really sometimes easiest to find listings in alphabetical order; (2) What happens when an article divides listings into different subsections by area within a city that doesn't need separate district articles? Interesting idea, though. I'll note that Siena#See already divides sights into three subsections, in order of prominence and importance, and then has informative 3rd-order subsections in the "Secondary sights" section. The sights on the Piazza del Campo are not listed in alphabetical order, but it would be absurd not to list the Palazzo Pubblico first, and the Fonte Gaia is not a building. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:35, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Hopefully even in this complex case, the most interesting listings would be the most viewed ones, no? The question is, if 'Piazza del Campo' could be put in the article as a (maybe somehow hidden) listing (Piazza del Campo==3991 views, Palazzo Pubblico==1723, Fonte Gaia==464 on WP) and then put into the region instead. As I said, right now I'd just try a prototype (with whatever reasonable 'metric' we can come up with) and we would see if it makes sense even, or garbage will come out of it :) -- andree 13:16, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

This would be a cool feature to trial, especially for region articles with completely empty sections (i.e. Wikivoyage:Featured collaboration#Current featured collaboration: improving region articles). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:58, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes. I think it would have a reasonable chance to find a few of the most important sights (or whatever). I wouldn't use 7+2, though, as probably some of the chosen ones have many views from irrelevant reasons – I am not convinced any metrics wouldn't miss some top ones (they may even be missing from the city and park articles) and include some strange choices. I am not sure whether I'd want a bit fewer, to encourage manual additions, or a bit more, to encourage manual removals, but I'm sure I'd want to encourage manual editing of the results. Still, for the worst regions articles, any addition is probably an improvement. –LPfi (talk) 15:40, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

I'd definitely encourage you to try it, so we can see what it comes up with, though without causing it to automatically edit in articlespace. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:02, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

It is an interesting idea. If it is possible, it would be good to use the number of views over a year or a longer period to avoid the ranking being skewed by places being in the news. If a celebrity is filmed touring a small museum then it may be the most viewed article in the region this week, but it probably won't make much difference over a year. AlasdairW (talk) 22:31, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, looks like there may be spikes sometimes :-) -- andree 06:30, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

It can happen when an article is featured, too. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:53, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I have now put together some code that did this, put the output into Jutland, North Jutland, Lolland-Falster and Siena (province) (ATM sorted by number of views, not alphabetically). If you have some other areas that you know well, that we could try this on, write it down - I can put the results e.g. into the respective Talk page, and we'll see if it works reasonably. On Jutland, it seems to have found approx. what I'd expect - in Siena province, most of the sights are in Siena, so not that useful. Would it make sense to only include first one/two sentence(s) of the 'source listings'? -- andree 17:32, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Andree, that looks good to me except that it has included the wikidata #, which puts the site on the map. This makes the map very crowded. Can the program leave out the wikidata #?

Our format for See and Do listings in region articles is to write in prose, rather than in bullet editing lists, but if this is a way of filling up the empty sections of region articles quickly, I think we can overlook that. Ground Zero (talk) 17:51, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Everything is possible :-) But TBH, the map is for me personally the most interesting part - without this, I had to use wanderlog + tripadvisor + google maps (e.g. search 'sights' in a map view) for all searching of POIs, when I was planning a roadtrip (around Denmark). Finding of the most interesting things would be so much easier with the above (basically it found the stuff I found via multi-hour research)... So for me personally at least, it'd be great - I understand the clutter objection, but IMO it's worth it. Maybe we could instead try to invent/suggest some improvements to kartographer to make it better (lower opacity of those markers, or something). -- andree 18:10, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

That would be a change in policy. Wikivoyage:Region article template says: "points of interest (such as those mentioned in "See" sections) should not usually have markers in region articles but should be linked to the bottom-level article where they have full listings." Unless this policy is changed after a consensus is reached, I am opposed to further use of an autogeneration program that violates this policy. Using the coding as-is means a lot of clean-up work to remove the Wikidata tags. Ground Zero (talk) 21:30, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

@Ground Zero, Andree.sk: A status quo solution to this would be to just put the code through ChatGPT and ask it to remove the markers (you might need to be specific in your input). I'm going to test this out on North Jutland. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:42, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Here's what I got for North Jutland: For those exploring North Jutland, there are several remarkable attractions to discover. One such wonder is the Råbjerg Mile, which stands as one of Europe's largest migrating dunes, steadily advancing about 15 metres eastward each year, creating new habitats for plants and animals on its western side. Moving on, the Rubjerg Knude offers a captivating experience. This former lighthouse perches 60 metres above sea level within towering sand dunes. In 2019, it underwent a daring 70-metre inland relocation to escape the fate of buildings succumbing to sand pressure and cliff falls. If you're intrigued by history, don't miss Lindholm Hoeje, an ancient Viking graveyard, along with its accompanying museum.

For a unique geographical encounter, visit Grenen, the northernmost point in Denmark, where the Baltic Sea meets the North Sea in a breathtaking natural spectacle. Art and design enthusiasts will appreciate the Utzon Centre, a cultural hub in Aalborg showcasing art, architecture, and design. Additionally, it sheds light on the works of Jørgen Utzon and offers a delightful dining experience.

While in Aalborg, you can also explore the Budolfi Church, a prominent Lutheran cathedral. For a modern art fix, there's the KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg. Animal lovers will enjoy Aalborg Zoo with its diverse collection of zoo animals, including giraffes, elephants, and big cats. The zoo's highlight is the savanna enclosure where African animals roam freely. And if you're a nature enthusiast, venture to Lille Vildmose, the largest raised bog in Western Europe, known for its wildlife exhibition centre, small cafe, restaurant, and exceptional bird-watching opportunities. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:46, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

What was the query there? You entered the current POIs and asked GPT to generate a text around it? Sure, this looks nicer - but in the end, is it nicer to use? Without the map, you have to search the articles manually (to find where the POIs actually are), so for me - not really. But if that's the consensus and I'm the only 'opposed', no biggie, I'll think about another ways... If anyone wants some regions 'processed' in the meantime, ping me :) -- andree 05:36, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

I entered "Can you remove the see listings from here and convert it to plain text in paragraph form? When I mean "in paragraph form", it should flow on to each other. Keep the attractions in bold and try to use British English (gave an example of Far West (New South Wales))." --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:56, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

It is not just removing the Wikidata tags, it is also adding links to relevant city articles for further details. I would prefer the autogenerated content was placed on the talk page and then used to create the normal format of region "See" section. AlasdairW (talk) 21:47, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

The links area already there, actually... -- andree 05:28, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I hadn't noticed the links. I think it also needs to say in the text what city the listing is in, so that I can read the section and see that city A has four attractions, but city B only has one (and for the benefit of anybody read a printout). AlasdairW (talk) 22:24, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

It’s worth pausing for a moment to take in the importance of this experiment. We are on the verge of signing up our first AI contributor. Bots have long been used on WV for simple housekeeping but here is a dimension step. Even if this particular effort is judged a failure, there will be another and better, then another. My first impression is that this effort is already at the standard of a contributor who is gushy but possessed of a formidable work ethic that can churn out text 24 / 7. I suggest its contributions are live-posted with little delay, in need of “patrolling” and perhaps a warning similar to the “translate” box, and the rest of us weigh in as for any other page. Its User or Talk page could carry the meta-discussion about aspects it needs to improve on. (Already it's picked up the human vice of putting bold in every third sentence.) No doubt Wikipedia is at a similar stage of evolution and has experience to share.

North Jutland is a good test subject as its city pages are middling quality. Any of us could have built its region page given an hour or two, but we could only spare that time at the expense of some other equally deserving page. The present volume of contributions is not only insufficient to maintain WV as a viable relevant guide, it is too low by at least one order of magnitude. AI is therefore mission-critical. Page-building from scratch of places with scant content needs human input for the time being, lots of it, but AI can release us to do what we do best. We might even find time to travel. Grahamsands (talk) 11:49, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Here I expect that the AI just changed the formatting, which should not be too error-prone (and errors like putting information in the wrong place should be easy to spot). It is different from the AI finding the info from other Wikivoyage pages (where it might mix up what's where), and very different from it finding the info from arbitrary sources (where bogus POIs might be convincingly described). What I am most concerned about is some not-too-careful user adding massive amounts of stuff, some of which is bogus. –LPfi (talk) 15:14, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I have converted North Jutland from the AI output to Wikivoyage style for region articles here (further improvements welcome ). It would be great if the AI could produce something closer to this, especially by not including the wikidata point. Ground Zero (talk) 15:24, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Wikivoyage 11 planning

Let's keep the initiative between linguistic communities and have our anniversary celebration every year! Since we have precedent with m:Wikivoyage 10, it is a matter of adapting to the needs of Wikivoyage 11. Again Wikimedia Small Projects will be supporting the campaign and will do all the cumbersome process of it globally. I think it would be good to know what we want in Wikivoyage 11, what content gaps in Wikivoyage to focus on and maybe something additional that I forget. Best, Galahad (sasageyo!)^(esvoy) 22:15, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

I'd love a Wikivoyage 11, but let's hope they actually put a CentralNotice banner this time – Wikivoyage 10 was a small-scale success, in that more articles were improved in a short period of time, but it was much less of a success than anticipated. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:52, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

That was disappointing last time. I'm hearing that the CN admins are feeling rather overwhelmed, and that more than just our request was ignored. So, maybe we put in the request far in advance? They can be scheduled to start automatically on a given date/time.

Also, I found that the variety and complexity of our criteria were burdensome to evaluate. Trying that with more participants would require too much time. I think we should consider only options that can be tallied automagically (with the possibility of a manual override to disqualify pointless or harmful edits), ideally through a single tracking system (we used two different tracking systems last year). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, this time the request for centralnotice will ideally be made in October, leaving September for discussion of all these points.

Regarding the other point, apart from those two, I don't see any other that could serve the purpose of the contest. Fountain serves for local edit-a-thon that follow the global rules, but an option should be evaluated for specific cases (as it happened last year).

Best, Galahad (sasageyo!)^(esvoy) 17:40, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

We can simplify the rules and most go back to Wikivoyage 5, i.e. the Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage edit-a-thon 2018, which was much more successful. There was concern in Wikivoyage 10 that editors would gamify the contest, find shortcuts in the competition rules and make bad-quality edits but as long as the advertising banner targets established editors, you will mostly get high-quality edits. Some of the country-specific edit-a-thons had invited brand new editors who didn't know the policies of any wiki, let alone Wikivoyage which resulted in a misalignment of their edits with the rules and standards here. Gizza ^(roam) 23:35, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

The model used (judges being volunteers from that community) works quite well. We can extend the call to both registered and non-registered users.

The global rules base prevents any related concerns. While this year there were no prizes (beyond the certificate), the other year there is an expectation (WLM style). Galahad (sasageyo!)^(esvoy) 00:30, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

I am primarily concerned with requiring as little manual effort from the volunteers in this community as possible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:44, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

True – there isn't a US$500 prize on the line here. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:07, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

FYI: CNN interactive piece on boarding passes

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/09/travel/paper-boarding-pass-history-emirates-dg/index.html —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:00, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

API Weirdness

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T345794

Wikivoyage is accessed primarily through this main website, but there are also other ways that people access Wikivoyage, including through Wikimedia's REST API. The Wikimedia team has built a really nice API for you to access Wikivoyage through your phone: New York City, for example... nice and formatted for your phone (open it on your phone if you want... it will look nice!).

We have a bit of a problem with one specific article, weirdly: Ramla. For some reason, when you query this via Wikimedia's mobile API here: https://en.wikivoyage.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Ramla, you get absolutely nothing as a response (i.e. content-length=0). Now, this gets a bit technical but Wikimedia delivers your content, generally, through a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which per Wikimedia's rules, caches that content up until time it is edited. So the point is, you can "bust" that caching, i.e. get through to the real thing, if you edit the article. So what I want to do is, mess with this article, Ramla, pare it down to its bare bones if need be, and see what specifically is breaking the Wikimedia parser. What I want is the community's permission to do that live. Do I have your permission to mess with this article for a week or so? If not, no worries, will move on to other tactics. Brycehughes (talk) 11:56, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Is it essential to do that for an entire week? Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:58, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

No. To be honest, I don't really want to do it. It's more like, I'd mess with it for, say, 10 minutes at a time, over the course of a week. That said, the task has been claimed on the wm dev team so perhaps they'll figure it out quickly. But see below. Brycehughes (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Is the problem with the page itself (~"the URL") or with the contents (in which case, copying the contents to other pages would break all of those pages, too)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:12, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Contents I think. In theory, yes. I don't know. One problem is that the API automatically rejects anything that isn't in article space, which makes testing a pain. Otherwise I'd just copy the contents to a user page and run it there. Brycehughes (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

@Brycehughes: Perhaps one should try the latter first, and if the test page is broken as well, one can experiment there. –LPfi (talk) 17:23, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Good point, I could just create a test page in article space I suppose. Probably a better idea. Brycehughes (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I made Test-Ramla. Let's see what happens. I'll request deletion (probably from Ikan Kekek) when I'm done. Brycehughes (talk) 18:08, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, ha, they seem to have fixed it. Ikan Kekek or whomever, could you delete the beautiful city of Test-Ramla? Brycehughes (talk) 18:10, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Done. –LPfi (talk) 18:23, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Gracias. Funny thing about the wm dev team. If you tag the right people, your problem is often fixed within hours. If you tag nobody, file a bug report in nowhere space there, it can languish for literally years. Brycehughes (talk) 18:26, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

:-)

I suppose few devs watch nowhere space, and those who happen to see the bug report might not have any idea about what it is about, code-wise. If WMF would prioritise fixing everything serious, they should have a system, but I expect the tech people prefer interacting with people who can explain their problem – and those often know whom to contact and how to tag the task. And if the fix is easy, a dev might do it instead of going for coffee. –LPfi (talk) 18:36, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah there was an issue once where they deprecated their "mobile content service" but also accidentally deprecated their "page content service" for mobile phones. I filed a bug report and they fixed it within 45 mins off of that but I also took a look at the random bug reports coming in. Just a ton of "what the fuck", "+1", screenshots, etc. You really would go for a coffee (or a beer) instead. Brycehughes (talk) 18:45, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I've also never worked for a company that deploys to production as quickly as WMF seems to do, but hey, whatever, if it works... I guess. Brycehughes (talk) 20:11, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

The Cathedral and the Bazaar, lesson 7 :-) –LPfi (talk) 20:47, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Heh, fair enough. How any QA engineer could have woken up and had a cup of coffee between the time I filed the bug report and the time it was resolved, I have no idea. But I live in a weird time zone. Brycehughes (talk) 21:17, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

AIUI only the WMF's bugmaster watches the "nowhere space" of untagged Phab tasks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Makes sense, I guess. They must get some interesting ones. Brycehughes (talk) 08:38, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Revisiting disambiguation pages

My view is that Birmingham should refer to Birmingham, England by default, since Birmingham, England is way more famous than Birmingham, Alabama, but I'm looking to get a second opinion on this.

Similarly, I'm thinking Portland should by default refer to Portland, Oregon, since it is much bigger and better known than Portland, Maine. The dog2 (talk) 22:07, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I suppose, but I will say that in the U.S., Birmingham, Alabama is better known than Birmingham, England. However, I would expect for the reverse to be generally true in the rest of the world. As for Portland, the one in Oregon is much bigger than the one in Maine, so yeah, probably, but on the East Coast of the U.S., the one in Maine is better known. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:31, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I supposed we could look at how we treated Perth as precedent. I won't be surprised if Perth, Scotland is better known than Perth, Western Australia to Scottish people (correct me if I'm wrong, AlasdairW), but on WV, Perth refers to the latter by default because it is by far the best known Perth internationally. The dog2 (talk) 22:46, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

This is one of these things that is very hard to please everybody. To me Portland refers to Isle of Portland, but I know of the existance of the two US cities.

I know Perth (Scotland) much better because I have been there several times, but I know of the Australian city. I think that most vistors to the Scottish city know of the Australian one, but this might not have been the case 30 years ago.

I would prefer Birmingham to refer to the city in England, but it is not an important issue. Although the Alabama city is better know in the US, those in the US may be more aware that there are several Birminghams as there are over a dozen US Birminghams with Wikipedia articles. AlasdairW (talk) 23:31, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with The dog2 regarding Birmingham. The Birmingham in the UK is around five times larger than the Birmingham in the US – it has also hosted various international events (including the unpopular Commonwealth Games), hence why it's the primary Birmingham on Wikipedia.

Using Hamilton as an example, Canadians will usually default to Hamilton, ON, while New Zealanders will default to Hamilton, Waikato – neither is considered the primary topic because they're equally known. Birmingham is not in a similar case, though – one is almost better-known than the other in around 190 or so other countries. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 23:29, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I wonder what other people think about Portland, but for me, as someone from Singapore, if you just say "Portland" to me, unless specified or otherwise obvious from context, I will by default assume you mean Portland, Oregon. The dog2 (talk) 02:40, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Ditto – I'd never heard of Portland in Maine until 5 or so years ago. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:52, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Everyone should note that I agreed with the suggestions, even if not enthusiastically. I think that 40 or 50 years ago, it would have been less obvious that Portland by default meant Oregon, but that city has grown so much and is really sizable. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:45, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Pageviews analysis suggests that Birmingham (Alabama) gets a little less than a third as many views as Birmingham (England). A clear winner, but not an overwhelming one, unlike, say, London, where the ratio is more like 10 to 1. I think that's enough to make it worth keeping the disambiguation page at Birmingham. On a similar basis I think it makes sense to keep the disambiguation page at Portland. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:29, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I think pageviews are an important consideration. I suggest the monthly view that Granger is using (the default is daily, for the last 20 days), and looking back over several years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:39, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘@Mx. Granger: So in your view, what should be the threshold we need to cross when deciding whether to default to the disambiguation page, or to the most famous city of that particular name? How do the page views compares between Berkeley, California and Berkeley, England for instance? We decided to make Berkeley refer to California by default instead of the disambiguation page. And likewise, how do the stats compare between Perth, Western Australia and Perth, Scotland? The dog2 (talk) 03:45, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Maybe a ratio of 4 to 1 or 5 to 1 would be a good reference point. I'm not totally sure, and other considerations are relevant too. In a comment above about Perth, User:AlasdairW thinks that "most visitors to the Scottish city know of the Australian one", which also seems relevant. I would guess the same is true of Portland (Maine) but maybe not Birmingham (Alabama), which would be a reason for keeping Birmingham as a disambiguation page but moving Portland (Oregon) to Portland.

The Berkeleys have about a 10 to 1 ratio, though it's harder to interpret these numbers when one of the pages is already at the main title – the Berkeley page has a built-in advantage over Berkeley (England) because the former is where readers end up if they type "Berkeley" into the search box. As for Perth, the ratio is between 4 to 1 and 3 to 1 (despite the built-in advantage for the page at the main title), and there are two cities vying for second place: Perth (Scotland) and Perth (Ontario). Based on that I think Berkeley should probably stay where it is, but I wouldn't object to making Perth a disambiguation page. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:54, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

This might not be helpful, but I think Glacier National Park is a good example. As a half-American, I was revolted to find this as a disambiguation page. But, indeed, Canada has their own Glacier National Park, and it's only about a 2:1 ratio on views for the American one vs the Canadian one. So, fair enough I think... DAB it. I also think that in general we can defer to en.wikipedia on disambiguation issues a lot of the time. Let them do the hard work over there, we don't need to bother with it so much. The collective brain trust they can aggregate there re trivial issues like disambiguation is far more than we could ever hope to pull together here. So in terms of Birmingham, yes, direct to Birmingham, UK. Brycehughes (talk) 01:01, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

(FWIW, that page wasn't a disambig page for Glacier NP long ago). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:54, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Heh, I know. That's actually why I noticed it/brought it up. Brycehughes (talk) 23:19, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Based on this discussion, I'll take it that we should leave Portland as a disambiguation page, but make Birmingham refer to the second largest city in England by default. The dog2 (talk) 15:32, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Not recommended places

I was wondering if it is appropriate to also add the places that are not recommended, to ensure that tourists are not scammed or run into unpleasant situations. Any opinions on this? —5.168.1.34 17:48, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Avoid negative reviews has some guidance. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:29, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

China editathon?

We've lately had new users here who've been editing and creating articles about places in China. That's great, but editathons, student assignments and the like nearly always come with the predictable downside of new users copying and pasting encyclopedic content from other sites, creating articles that should be listings, customizing standard section headers to fit their desired structure, and most problematically, ignoring edit summaries and their user talk pages and starting to edit war without comment.

Is there anyone supervising this editathon that could talk to the participants about the basics of Wikivoyage, or at least explain to them that it's important for them to read their user talk pages? I really don't want to discourage potentially valuable new users by having to start suspending their editing privileges.

Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:16, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

You might want to ask User:Piotrus if he/she has anything to do with this since he/she was supervising an editathon by Chinese and Korean students last year. STW932 (talk) 09:27, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Nah, I highly doubt this editathon is hosted by Piotrus – they're usually on top of things and lets us know well in advance. Most likely, we'll have to do some digging on Meta. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:47, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Weeell, thanks for the kind words, but it might indeed be related to me. I am quite busy with many things IRL (I did not even notice the ping in this thread and was about to post a new one and information about the 2023 edition of my Wikivoyage/Wikipedia course: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Hanyang_University/Understanding_Small_and_Big_Data_with_Wikis_(2023) ). Same as last year, my students will try to improve ~two dozen locations primarily related to China and Korea.

And as before, I will do my best to explain things to students but, well, they are students. I am writing here having just finished offce hours (plural, more to come in few days), and, well. Ikan is totally correct students will do all the things he mentions, despite my tutelage. As a reminder, most of my students are ESLs, and increasingly this generation English skills are... problematic. They rely on machine translation a lot (which is to say, a portion of my class probably does not understand what I say at all). And well, some pay attention to my explanations etc. but some obviously won't (or can't). I appreciate @SHB2000 speedy deleting Mount Laojun and I apologize for making you "work" (yes, that was my student edit), but well, I did not tell that student to create that page - this is just one of dozen cases of a student showing me a page and explaining, in broken English, that they want to chose this for their topic (denied, of course, I know this is out of scope). The syllabus tells them to chose a city/town level entity, but not everyone pays attention to these details, and we had an activity today about uploading/adding images, and well, one student created said empty page (weeks before they are supposed to start doing that), several other uploaded copyvios (despite last class having a 40 minute segment abotu copyright...). I like my job, but bottom line is, students will make mistakes. I hope the end result will be worth it, like last semester's contributions of https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Hanyang_University/Understanding_Small_and_Big_Data_with_Wikis_(Fall_2022) which I think created over a dozen of decent entries. But it will take few months to train this crop of new editors, as usual.

Anyway, please keep me informed of any problematic edits. Honestly, there shouldn't have been much. Last Friday we had the BEBOLDish activity of "make a constructive edit on Wikivoyage and show it to the instructor" - I have seen only a dozen edits and they seemed ok-ish, today we had the activty about adding an image (I expect some will be removed due to overcrowding an article, as of course some students just piled in on the same article that their buddy sitting next/in front/etc. chose...). Piotrus (talk) 08:57, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry about that (and no need to apologise) – normally, I'd have been less hasty with speedy deletions, but this one just contained an image and didn't think useful content will come out of it (and it can simply be recreated). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:01, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Piotrus, I'm glad the assignment is underway and I'm glad you're supervising this. As a some-time professor, I know that students don't always listen carefully or understand, but the most important thing I'd like you to emphasize is that they need to read any messages on their user talk pages. That's probably more important than anything else. All my best to you, Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:29, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek I did repeat this several times during one of the first classes. I will repeat again. For some reason, however, I find many students repeatedly ignore messages and pings, they don't even click on them. I don't know why. I tried stressing this semster this by telling them that if they miss important messages they may be banned/blocked and fail the course, but... I think plummeting language proficiency (reliance on machine translation) is becoming an issue here (as I said, some of my students are sadly not able to comprehend what I am saying at all - and no, I can't ban them from taking the course, sigh). Piotrus (talk) 09:34, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Ps. Feedback - yeah, this is one of mine too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Hanyangprofessor2#Wiki_voyage Apologies. Student has good intentions but they jumped the proverbial gun by posting this. Piotrus (talk) 10:17, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

PS. In a week+ I'll post here a list of topics (articles about towns/cities) chosen by my students. Most of the course activity will be focused there, with the occasional exception of visiting the banner suggestion page and such). I am also open to any ideas if you have suggestions about pages/places to direct student attention to (some backlogs?). --Piotrus (talk) 09:36, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Early apologies. We had an activity "What do you think is a popular tourist spot in your country that is not covered on Wikivoyage? Extra point if you can improve it/create it during today’s class." but while I was distracting answering a question, some students created pages instead of listings as I intended. I told them to merge/copy content as relevant, and on Monday I will show them how to create listings. Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 07:50, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Regarding copyvios, I found one on the Linyi article. The description of Wang Xizhi's former residence is actually a word-for-word translation of the first two paragraphs of an article on Baidu Baike. STW932 (talk) 14:14, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

@STW932 I wish I could say I am surprised that students plagiarise; instead I can only apologize. Could you remove it and leave a warning for the student? I'll use it as an learning example in the upcoming class. Piotrus (talk) 15:03, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Sure, I'll probably do that tomorrow. I'm going to bed now. STW932 (talk) 17:03, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Done. STW932 (talk) 08:35, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Update: today we had an in-class activity "create a new article using the correct skeleton template, add at least two listings and a map". Hope there won't be too much cleanup needed - I noticed two city parks and one district that may need merger/deletion. Other stuff seems fine outside of the possible copyvio (if we are lucky, the text is copypaste translation from Wikipedia/Chinese wikivoyage rather than Baidu/some random webpages). And the usual, sadly, grammar/vocabulary issues (most of the students these days in my class are using machine translation and there is nothing I can do to prevent it, I fear). Do let me know if the quality of the entries created in this mini-editathon is acceptable or not worth it so I can consider how to refine this activity for next year. --Piotrus (talk) 07:16, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

List of articles that are "main projects to create and/or expand" for our class for those who want to watchlist them and offer feedback to students. Most but not all have been started alraedy or existed before. A few students have not chosen their topic yet but most have:

• Baengnyeoung Island/Baengnyeoung/Baengnyeongdo
• Boseong County/Boseong
• Dezhou
• Enshi
• Goseong (Gyeongsang) (see Goseong)
• Haenam
• Heide
• Heze
• Hezhou
• Huzhou
• Jianchuan
• Korean palaces
• La Toussuire
• Luanchuan
• Ma'anshan
• Namyangju
• Pengzhou
• Rizhao
• Seoul/East
• Tai'an
• Yuhuan
• Xinxiang
• Xinzhou
• Ya'an
• Yangyang
• Yichang
• Yongsan
• Yulin_(Shaanxi)
• Zhuzhou

Despite the appearances to the contrary, my class is in South Korea, not China (but as you can see, I have many Chinese exchange students taking my class). --Piotrus (talk) 07:16, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Method of splitting a long list of businesses into sub categories "Budget", "Mid-range", "Splurge"?

What is your preferred way of doing this when you are not familiar with that city and those specific businesses? For example, how would you do this for a long list of restaurants shown in an "Eat" section for a specific city? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 13:29, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I've translated several articles from other language versions, and sometimes this includes arranging restaurants and hotels into price categories - plus deleting places that are out of business. This is how I've done it: First, get price information from the businesses' websites (usually most reliable and up to date), social media sites (mostly restaurants, meaning photos of menus), review sites (again photos of menus), and for hotels also prices given on Google Maps. Then, arrange the prices in order from highest to lowest/or the other way around, works equally well. At that point you will usually get some clusters of prices that enables you to distribute the places into price ranges. --Ypsilon (talk) 18:56, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Copyright violations in Pangasinan

A number of new users seem to be creating articles in the Pangasinan region with text entirely copied from various sources. With so much copied text, I don't see how these articles can be edited over time without being 'fruit of the poisoned tree' (to contort a phrase), so my instinct is to propose all for deletion.

What is the preferred way to tackle these? Copyright violations of text content does not seem to fall in the listed criteria for speedy deletion. Nominating every page for a discussion on deletion seems excessive given the clear case, but I'm happy to do it if that's considered proper.

• Anda_(Pangasinan)
• Agno
• Aguilar
• Asingan
• Balungao
• Bani
• Basista
• Bautista
• Bayambang
• Binalonan
• Binmaley
• Bolinao
• Burgos_(Pangasinan)

Gregsmi11 (talk) 12:54, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Copyright violations are a reason for speedy deletion; these may have to be nuked given the nature of these copyvios. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 13:02, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Done – I deleted all except Bolinao, where I reverted it to its last copyvio-free revision. I've also given all users warnings. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 13:14, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

You're quick; thank you! Gregsmi11 (talk) 13:24, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

It was definitely another reason for me to stay up until 23:00 :-). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:42, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Copied text just keeps popping up in this region. I've removed text from Manaoag and Mangaldan, and left messages for @DimasalangPH. Now there's new text at Natividad, Mapandan which I've left in place for now and tagged; maybe it'll get noticed this time. Gregsmi11 (talk) 15:17, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

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Creating a Wikivoyage Article for the Historic and Well-Known Gyeongbokgung Palace

Recently, Professor @Piotrus assigned me the task of writing a travel guide-style entry on Korea for Wikivoyage. I sought permission to focus on Korea's historic and renowned palace, Gyeongbokgung. @Piotrus advised me to consult with the community on Wikivoyage's Traveler's Pub to determine whether writing an article on Gyeongbokgung would be appropriate.

I would like to pose this question to you. I've noticed that individual articles exist on Wikivoyage for China's Forbidden City and France's palace of Versailles. Given this, would it be suitable to create an article for Gyeongbokgung, which is one of the most important and historic palaces in Korea?

To help with understanding, I will attach a link to an article about Gyeongbokgung written in English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongbokgung

Rukkha1024 (talk) 03:39, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

The standard for most destinations is found at Wikivoyage:What is an article? and is the "sleep test": a destination is typically a place where you can travel to and stay, sleeping there. Otherwise, it's not a destination itself, but a site to see at a larger destination. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:13, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

@Koavf Well, the student did cite an example that seem to fail the sleep test: "There is no accommodation for visitors inside the Forbidden City". Versailles is a town, so that's fine. I also checked Agra#Taj_Mahal . So would you recommend writing about te palace under the town it is in? And what do we do about Forbidden City? Piotrus (talk) 05:31, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

To be consistent, yes, but there are some rare exceptions to the sleep-here rule. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:37, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I've been reviewing UNESCO sites and some random articles. So all parks are fine because you can camp and sleep there. And Great Wall of China has an entry because the guide says you can also find some parts of it you can camp in... which seems stretching the sleep-here rule to an amusing degree IMHO. Piotrus (talk) 02:28, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I read the "Wikivoyage: What is an article?" page and noticed an "Exceptions" section that challenges the "sleep test."

From the cited examples, the Forbidden City and Angkor (a newly added example) maintain individual status despite not having accommodations for sleep. Additionally, the "Exceptions" section in "Wikivoyage: What is an article?" suggests Central Park as another example of an exception.

Although Gyeongbokgung is more modest in scale compared to the Forbidden City and Angkor, it is still both substantial and intricate.

What do you think of my opinion? Rukkha1024 (talk) 06:01, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not familiar enough with this destination to have a meaningful opinion. I just wanted to direct you to the relevant policy. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:03, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article about the palace is quite substantial, but I would suggest working on the existing listing in Seoul/Jongno. If the listing gets so big with information that's relevant to travelers that it starts to dominate that district article, we could consider making it its own district, like the Forbidden City, but the thing is, there are five palaces listed in Seoul/Jongno#See. Would it serve the traveler well to make one of them its own district? What about the other palaces? Which ones if any should get an equivalent amount of coverage? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:38, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

My primary goal is to introduce valuable palaces in Korea to travelers. Gyeongbokgung was the official residence of the kings of the Joseon Dynasty and carries significant historical and symbolic value. While the current article on Gyeongbokgung is still a stub, it has the potential to contain a wealth of information, much like articles on places such as the Forbidden City.

I aim to showcase Gyeongbokgung, a palace that holds both historical importance and symbolic significance within Korea's collection of palaces. Although the 'Seoul/Jongno#See' article introduces five palaces, none of the others, except for Changdeokgung, hold as much historical and symbolic importance as Gyeongbokgung.

In conclusion, I would like to introduce travelers to the most valuable palaces in Korea. While it's a sensitive task to assess the value of cultural heritage, given the limited resources available to foreign travelers, providing information on the most valuable palaces would be helpful. Rukkha1024 (talk) 12:31, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Which ones - all? I am relatively inexperienced around here, but frankly, I think most big palaces/castles/museums should, eventually, have their dedicated guides here, with intererior maps and like. Piotrus (talk) 02:31, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

@Rukkha1024, Piotrus: Consider following a similar approach taken on Canberra/Acton#Q509884 – that way, you can avoid having to have empty sections onward from Buy. Just a suggestion – feel free to take it with a grain of salt. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 03:40, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

@SHB2000 Can you elaborate? I am not sure what it is that this article is supposed to demonstrate? Is this the correct link? Piotrus (talk) 04:06, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Yep – what I meant was all points of interest within the palace be listed as a subsection of the listing on Seoul/Jongno, or using double dot points (**). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 04:08, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

The usual approach is to treat a palace, cathedral or other major building as an attraction within a destination article. If it is well-known add a redirect to the attraction listing to make it easier for readers to find & for editors to link to, e.g. Taj Mahal, Alhambra, Buckingham Palace, British Museum and many others. I'd say treat Gyeongbokgung like that, a listing and a redirect.

Exceptions are mainly for things big enough to count as districts in a large city, e.g Forbidden City or large places outside a city, e.g Versailles or Angkor Archaeological Park. A building might also be moved to its own article if the listing became too large for the destination article, but looking at Seoul/Jongno#Palaces that does not seem to be the case here yet.

I'd say for now create a redirect and work on the listing. If it becomes huge, we can revisit the question of spinning it off to its own article. Pashley (talk) 13:46, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I truly understand your saying. Thanks! Rukkha1024 (talk) 13:55, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I have created a redirect at Gyeongbokgong. Pashley (talk) 14:56, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

One thing to look out for is to include too much detail to the listing. If we document every sculpture, any temple would get a huge listing. I don't know any relevant guidelines, but Rome/Vatican has quite long descriptions of the main sites (subsections, not just listings), which could be used for comparison. Is the Vatican format something to aim for or something to avoid? –LPfi (talk) 15:31, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

The Vatican article looks good to me. Way more detail is possible but not in style for this site. About Gyeongbokgong: It really is a large, complex attraction, as shown in the Wikipedia article about it. If you compare the sizes of the Forbidden City and Gyeongbokgong at the same scale on Google Maps, though, the Forbidden City is much bigger and has around twice the number of marked points of interest within in. I don't think the idea of a separate Gyeongbokgong article is at all crazy, but let's see how well we can do with a multi-faceted listing in the Jongno article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:37, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Also consider what links might be added in higher-level articles such as Palaces which redirects to Grand houses or Monarchies; either of those might get a whole section on Korea. It would also be possible to add links in Pre-modern Korea or to create a travel topic article on "Korean palaces", a bit like Churches in Ethiopia. None of those should have the main info on Gyeongbokgong, though; that goes in a listing for now (perhaps an article later) with links from the articles mentioned. Pashley (talk) 19:06, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

The Korean article has a short listing for the Hwaseong Fortress (needs a redirect to Suwon). I think another student of mine wanted to write an article about that one but b/c of the issues we discussed here we decided to work on something else. I still believe Wikivoyage would benefit from having a dedicated article about it, because for example now we have 2+ not merged short listings for what is a relatively large, UNESCO-class attraction too, one that could use its own map etc. See Wikipedia article on it too. Piotrus (talk) 02:50, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Either way, what is definitely not OK is the current situation, in which this palace has an article that's breadcrumbed as a subdistrict of Jongno. I will merge and redirect that article to Seoul/Jongno#Palaces soon if no-one else does. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:47, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Done. Redirected to Seoul/Jongno#Gyeongbokgong. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:19, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

San Luis Potosi

"San Luis Potosi (state)" has been renamed as "San Luis Potosí (state)". If the redirects from other pages can be fixed, that would be good. There doesn't seem to be an automated way to fix this for Wikivoyage. A Wikivoyage administrator is needed to add the ReplaceText Extension (special:replacetext). This will allow automatically replacing all links on all pages to the new target. Without the missing extension, it is very difficult and time-consuming to manage page title changes that affect multiple pages since then each page has to be edited manually one by one (which could be hundreds or even thousands of pages for a popular page). Nicole Sharp (talk) 12:18, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

"San Luis Potosi" should also be renamed as "San Luis Potosí". Nicole Sharp (talk) 21:11, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

If you change things to make this incredibly unimportant minor "spelling change", then please be courteous enough to go back and test things like links and breadcrumb trails to make sure that you leave things working like they did when you found them. Mrkstvns (talk) 23:00, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Additional discussion is at "talk:San Luis Potosi (state)#San Luis Potosí". Nicole Sharp (talk) 12:39, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

CB radio

Can someone please add an article to Wikivoyage covering the travel topic of "CB radio", "radio communication", or "rural telecommunication"? I am trying to find out if I might need a two-way radio (e.g. CB radio) for an upcoming roadtrip across the USA. This is primarily to be able to call for help in case of an emergency in a rural area without cellular telephone service but could also be useful to get information from other travelers about traffic and road conditions. However, there is a lot of mixed information online about CB radio. Assuming that anyone is within listening range (which is quite limited for citizens' band) I have read reports online that CB radios are no longer commonly used in the USA and specifically that emergency personnel in the USA often do not monitor the CB radio emergency channel any more in which case an emergency signal should actually be broadcast on Channel 19 (the most commonly used channel) instead of Channel 9 (the emergency-only channel). If any Wikivoyagers have experience with CB radios in rural areas, that will be a very helpful article to add to Wikivoyage. The alternatives to a CB radio might be a portable ham radio (which requires an FCC license in the USA) or a satellite emergency texting service (available from Motorola and Garmin). Nicole Sharp (talk) 16:24, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

We try to cover a bit of the theme in Electrical systems#Two-way radio and Mobile phones#Satellite phones. I assume you are right in that the CB range is too short to be much help in an emergency – cars on the same road are more reliably alarmed by visual means. However, I am European and have no experience of CB radios. On marine VHF it is common practice to monitor more than one channel (usually two), a separate emergency channel nobody listens to sounds odd. One more option would be an EPIRB (or rather its on-shore equivalents), I think those are discussed in some itinerary, shortly mentioned in Cruising on small craft, but not discussed in any general article.

I agree that a more thorough discussion would be good to have, preferably about all different consumer two-way radios (perhaps including ham options). However, I don't know enough to write it.

–LPfi (talk) 17:36, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Visual communication is an idea that I had not thought of. Trying to send smoke signals is likely dangerous and illegal (road flares are also not safe to keep inside a car) but at night a green laser pointer could be used (though this may still be illegal in some locations and is hazardous to aircraft). I would suggest putting all of this instead under a comprehensive article for "emergency communication" to specifically cover different methods on how to get help when stranded in rural areas (whether on land or water). Nicole Sharp (talk) 17:49, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Emergency communication is also likely to be different than normal (non-emergency) communication which is a good reason for having it covered in a separate article. For example, CB radios can be illegally modified to increase their range, but I do not know if the USA FCC allows exceptions for emergency use. The Motorola satellite texting service allows free text messages by satellite for emergency use only whereas Garmin requires a paid subscription even for emergency use only. This is from a small/affordable satellite transponder that attaches to any smartphone. That is likely a better alternative to Terrestrial radio but the CB radio could also be useful in non-emergency situations for general traffic updates from other drivers using CB radios. Nicole Sharp (talk) 17:56, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

@Nicole Sharp, assuming your question is related to the upcoming eclipse, I don't think you need to worry about this. You're not going to be in the middle of nowhere. Cell phone coverage should be good for all of your trip if you stay on the interstates and major highways (and route around the National Radio Quiet Zone on the western point of Maryland), and for nearly all of your trip even if you don't. See https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/us-cellular-coverage-map for a map. Any given spot might have poor signal, but most of the large cell phone dead areas are north or further west of New Mexico.

If you think it would be fun to use a CB, then you can get one. Over-the-road truck drivers, especially those who've been doing it for years, still use CBs. They're useful if you want to ask someone nearby what's causing the unexpected traffic jam, or if you want to warn others about a traffic hazard. However, I don't think I've seen one in a personal vehicle since the 1980s, and they are more useful if you are on major trucking routes than if you are in the middle of nowhere. The range for a portable set (i.e., no permanently installed antennas) can be up to about three miles. A satellite phone would be more effective ...but if you're just driving there and back, I think that would be overkill. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:21, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

An emergency communication device would be for both everyday local use as well as for travel use. Large areas of Western Maryland (where I live) and West Virginia (near where I live) do not have cellular telephone service, as well as large areas of New Mexico. For local travel, I try to avoid those areas specifically because I am afraid of being injured or having my vehicle break down and not being able to call for help. The map that you linked to is not accurate since I know for a fact where local dead zones are (e.g. New Germany State Park), at least for AT&T. Even on the official AT&T map not all of the dead zones are marked, unless they've recently added coverage since the last time I "voyaged" there. I am worried that coverage in rural southeastern New Mexico (the parts of the state where UFO crashes are alleged) might be similar to coverage in rural western Maryland. A lot of the cellular telephone dead zones also appear to specifically be around USA National Forests, where backcountry camping is free. Most major roads and highways are going to have cellular telephone coverage so my main concern about CB radios is that they are not going to be useful in an emergency if no one is listening to CB radios in rural areas not near major trucking routes. I read that small towns used to have CB "base stations" (with a much larger reception range than a portable CB radio) that were monitored 24/7 for emergency broadcasts but I don't think these exist any more? Nicole Sharp (talk) 21:53, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Generally, in a small town, "outdated" equipment will be kept for as long as it works, and then discarded. Consequently, I don't think you could predict where it would/wouldn't work, especially since terrain matters so much. Any place, even in the middle of a city with excellent cell phone coverage, can have "that one spot" with poor coverage, and the same is true for any type of radio-based communication. You could be within walking distance of a town with a CB station and still not have CB coverage for the particular spot you happen to be in. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:05, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. The chances of ending up being stuck in a spot in the middle of nowhere without cellphone coverage but with somebody monitoring a CB somehow seem lower than those of getting stuck in a place that has neither. If you're traveling to the middle of nowhere, some form of satellite communication seems like the logical choice. As far as I can tell, there are three options:

• Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) - push a button and wait for SAR to show up. This utilizes global infrastructure that is used for aviation and nautical purposes. They communicate via Sarsat, which is directly monitored by SAR. No subscription, but also no messaging. But you can have it registered so SAR can contact somebody who knows about your travel plans. Typically also transmit a signal on 121.5 MHz for SAR to use as a beacon to home in on.
• Satellite messengers like the already mentioned Motorolas and Garmin inReach, etc. - adds text messaging via proprietary services that usually require some form of monthly subscription. They use different satellite networks (Garmin and Zoleo for example use Iridium), and there is some kind of company or organization responsible for relaying your distress signal to SAR.
• Satellite phone - best for actual communication but super expensive, afaik.

El Grafo (talk) 10:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

These can be rented, but you're probably looking at $50 a week for the most basic options, going up to $100 or more. A standard check-in plan with a buddy ("It's Monday morning, I'm here, I'm going there. I plan to check in with you when I get there, probably in about three hours"), on the other hand, costs whatever you pay for a few texts per day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:23, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I thought of the same thing. Assuming that I am returning to the same hotel I left from, I can leave a note that if I am not back by such-and-such time then an emergency has happened and they should contact the police to start a search party. I figure with enough water and food in the car, I can be stranded for at least a few days before the situation becomes a real emergency. Nicole Sharp (talk) 02:07, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Letting somebody know about your intentions is always a good idea regardless of what communication devices you carry. And thb, for a road trip it's probably all you need as "insurance". El Grafo (talk) 09:09, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I talked to AT&T and they admitted that their map may contain errors. What the map provides is areas that should have coverage but there can still be localized dead spots that aren't always marked on the map. AT&T also said that 911 calls can still sometimes work even in areas with no service from AT&T since the 911 calls have the highest priority and can sometimes piggyback off a third-party cell tower that won't otherwise show as a cell phone signal for an AT&T phone. Localized dead spots are maybe where a cell phone booster could be most useful, since it is technically in a coverage area but the signal is otherwise obstructed or too weak. Using the official AT&T map, there isn't really anywhere completely without service between Maryland and New Mexico other than the USA National Radio Quiet Zone in West Virginia and the area around Carlsbad Caverns National Park. For the very rural areas such as USA National Forests a CB radio is only going to be of use to get help in an emergency if the USA Forestry Service is using CB radios. Otherwise satellite or ham radio are likely the only practical alternatives. A CB radio still sounds like "fun" though and could be useful for traffic reports. Nicole Sharp (talk) 16:55, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

According to the Cobra user manual, "a CB radio can... get local information to find a destination [and] suggest spots to eat and sleep". I didn't even think of that. I was thinking of CB radios for emergencies and traffic updates but they might be even more useful to be able to get recommendations from locals and other travelers on places to sleep, eat, or sightsee. Nicole Sharp (talk)

backstreetacademy.com

Recently an user has added the above tour operator in few it:voy articles. I've seen that the same website is present on en:voy (added 9 years ago by an anonymous IP). I'd like to have a more extensive opinion to understand if it's good to keep it or not, according to Wikivoyage:Listings#Tour listings. Actually, according to my understanding, it has physical location in every Country it offers tours (i.e. allowed), but it also has a booking service and most likely resell the tours (i.e. not allowed) on the other side they sell activity available at a destination (i.e. allowed).

What's your opinion? Andyrom75 (talk) 10:25, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I would remove those links per Wikivoyage:Don't tout and Wikivoyage:Listings#Tour listings. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:01, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

According to "they enable locals to offer authentic and unique activities" they should be removed as aggregator. We of course might want to do an exception as "a social enterprise, they work with many underprivileged people who either serve as hosts or facilitators", which means they might offer things that our readers want to do and which are hard to find in other ways. On the other hand, I would like to make sure that they indeed work in the way described and don't put too much money in their own pockets. Does anybody know? Also, we usually don't list one enterprise in many many city articles (nine as of now). Should they rather be in Aggregators or Responsible travel – if they indeed are responsible (see Volunteer travel for some caveats)? –LPfi (talk) 08:31, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Ibaman, I've seen that in 2017 you rephrase their description in Yogyakarta article. What's your opinion about this tour operator? --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:38, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

• my opinion about the link's text: as it was, it was really out of line with WV:Tour, WV:Tone and Don't tout, with some Words to avoid, bad grammar choices, and needed copyedit, which I did. Ibaman (talk) 17:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

LPfi, I would exclude "Volunteer travel" because as per my understanding a tourist go there to have an "experience" not to "help them" (e.g. building an hospital, teach English, etc.), but I agree with you that this tour operator is in the thin border of: "Aggregators & Responsible travel". --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:49, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

No, I didn't intend to include them in Volunteer travel, but some of the same caveats apply when a company talks about alleviating poverty by using their services. –LPfi (talk) 08:59, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

@LPfi, I think that every time we spend holidays in a poor area (eating, sleeping, visit,...), we "alleviate poverty", because in a way or another we bring and leave some money there. However, following the saying "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime", a Volunteer travel should be the one where we spend time to "teach them how to fish".

Maybe this tour operator use that description in a smart way and we are not able to state how our money will be divided between them; for sure it's not a no-profit organization. Andyrom75 (talk) 09:15, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

It is called a "social enterprise". Shouldn't those be non-profit? If not, then we should really remove them (unless we get real evidence they are doing a change to the better). –LPfi (talk) 09:21, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Ohh, I wasn't aware of Social enterprises. Interesting concept. In this case I would say that we could classify it that way. Andyrom75 (talk) 11:08, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

[edit conflict] I now see for Cebu (at their site):

"When you're in the Philippines and looking for things to do in Cebu and the surrounding islands then we've got it all. From serving up the best Lecon in Cebu, making amplified bamboo speaker, perfecting the Filipino martial arts of Eskrima to exploring street food vendors that only locals have access to. :) We guarantee that in addition to her magnificent beaches and churches, Cebuanos has so much more to offer to travelers so come and let's discover the magic of Cebu through the backstreets of this beautiful island."

This does sound like any general tour organiser. Why wouldn't I have access to street food vendors? What have beaches and churches to do with the unprivileged locals? If they indeed do what they promise in the article, why not tell up front? How can they still offer "it all"? Do you want an unprivileged guide to the church instead of one who studied history and theology? You might, but not always. The description at their main page does talk about alleviating poverty and conserving heritage, but I don't feel like trusting them.

–LPfi (talk) 08:59, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

@Ibaman, changes aside, do you think this tour operator has all the policy requirements to be listed here in Wikivoyage? Andyrom75 (talk) 07:21, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

well, how could I best put it in words, the very substance of its posting makes me suspicious, thinking of ulterior motives and shady intentions behind a glossy presentation. Maybe I'm too paranoid, but honestly, this is what I'm feeling about this. Ibaman (talk) 11:52, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

If I understood clearly each other position, SHB2000 is in favor to delete each occurrence, while me, LPfi and Ibaman are in doubt.

In case like this, where only one person take a clear decision what is wiser to do: remove the occurrences or keep the status quo (although reached without a consensus)? --Andyrom75 (talk) 16:07, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

From my quick glance, it's a for-profit middleman for booking tours with an added bonus of a translator/interpreter. The unsubstantiated claims of social impact are a nice gloss, but if these claims add up to enough to merit allowing an exception to existing policies, we need to be equally comfortable with Airbnb Experience (and others) listings with more verifiable social impacts. If that's a door we want to open, I think we need to consider a policy addressing "social enterprises". Gregsmi11 (talk) 16:58, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

@Gregsmi11, I've checked "Airbnb Experience". Excluding very few exceptions, it's a huge collection of solo guides that offer their services for any kind of activity. If previously I was in doubt, now I'm more inclined to eliminate all the occurrences of "social enterprises" without changing the policy.

On the other hand, could be useful to have a specific page that explain what is a "social enterprise" and maybe few examples that worth to be quoted. Andyrom75 (talk) 07:29, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I think we could have a paragraph (or a section) in Responsible travel, which also should refer to (or explain) the caveats. –LPfi (talk) 07:38, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Anyway, I don't see any evidence of an actual social impact, which should be significant for us to make an exception. What's more, it seems there web page seems not to be honest, nor in line with our descriptions. I think they should be deleted, unless we find a good page of theirs and reliable third-party reports that explain their business and show that using their services indeed is a good way of responsible travel. –LPfi (talk) 07:35, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Since there's almost a consensus on delete the occurrences, I can do it (on both en:voy & it:voy), while I'll let someone else to take care about for the description of the "social enterprise" in a page of the project. --Andyrom75 (talk) 16:15, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Done. Andyrom75 (talk) 09:29, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

AI and Wikivoyage

Food for thought. I asked ChatGPT to "write a wikivoyage article about la toussuire" (wikipedia:La Toussuire. (This is a French tourist resort missing from WV that a student of mine would like to write about; I've used it as a test case of how useful this would be for us - and for my class). https://chat.openai.com/share/bbbdbd98-da67-4fd9-8251-7f0ed2006415

Obviously, I cannot prevent my students from using this tool, and we need to be aware that some will do so - and not just studens, there will be (new?) editors who will try to help like this (or "help"). And I think it is a good learning opportunity for my class, particularly when it comes to stuff like "how to get started with your article", and a reminder to double check all information / verify all factual claims.

But as for WV at large, this does suggest AI could be of use to us by generating entries - as long as someone would check them, of course...?

Anyway, if anyone would like to criticize the AI entry and be very specific about mistakes it made as relates to WV's manual of style or other policies, do let me know - I'd like to show this example to students in few days. Piotrus (talk) 09:03, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

FTR, the previous discussion about this issue can be found on Wikivoyage talk:Copyright-related issues#Articles vs GPT. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:12, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I did not look at the accuracy or style (or the copyright questions raised in the other thread) of the ChatGPT generated article. Facts can be double-checked, and style can be fixed (no different from new pages that need some help, or old pages that have fallen out of date). I don't want to open a new can of worms, but you can even ask ChatGPT in your prompt or in a followup question to use wikivoyage formatting and templates, and then ask for the full markup ready to paste into a new article.

My concern with using AI to generate content is that it contravenes the philosophy of the whole guide. Consider the following:

"Wikivoyagers are travel writers and members of a world-wide community of contributors to Wikivoyage. [...] We are people just like you. Some of us are interested in travelling, some are interested in their local communities, and others are interested in wiki-housekeeping and organisation. What all of us have in common is that we want to share what we know with travellers everywhere. (Wikivoyage:About#Wikivoyagers)(emphasis added)

The value of our travel guide is that it is the product of a community effort to share what we collectively know about places for the sake of travel. It's great not just because it can be up to date and accurate, but there is something human about deciding to share information, and there is something equally human about acting on shared information. Especially in travel.

"Whenever travellers meet each other on the road, they swap info about the places they came from and ask questions about places they're going.(Wikivoyage:About)

Maybe I just enjoy coming home with a good story, but I'll always opt for the suggestion of a fellow traveller in a new place over something that happens to be the top result in any search engine. Presenting AI travel "advice" alongside what Wikivoyagers have written and revised over many years does a disservice to the values that make WV unique. Gregsmi11 (talk) 17:22, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

@Gregsmi11 Fair point, but it does take a "fellow traveller" to make the AI do something. Is it fair to deny them this tool if they can use it responsibly?

That said, I tried the tool again and I think we need to be careful - something I'll stress to my students. For example, a while ago I wrote a guide to Chorzów. I've now asked the AI to do the same. Some of the content I see AI generated seems usable at first glance, but it is certainly important to double check everything. For example, it generated an entry for "Saint Jadwiga church" that contains an error and then some pointless generalities: "This stunning Neo-Gothic church is a notable architectural landmark. Its intricate design and beautiful stained glass windows are worth admiring.". The church is not neo-gothic but Neoromanesque.... It also invented a listing for a non-existent "Stary Browar Chorzów" and likewise for some restaurants that don't seem to exist - seems it started hallucinating. It's sleep section contains an entry on a real hotel followed by a fake one and some gibberish about appartments.

The amount of hallucinations I see gives me a pause, given Wikivoyage does not require references. Piotrus (talk) 10:04, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

It's not fair to deny any tool used responsibly, but I don't think we know what responsible use of AI looks like yet (or at least we haven't written a policy about it). Formatting listings? Brainstorming attractions? Translating and copyediting? Creating basic outline articles where we have gaps in coverage? We've got the hammer, now we just need to invent some nails before we start swinging.

I think ChatGPT is especially risky because it can be very good at making hallucinations sound reliable. Pointless generalities tend to be edited out eventually, but small factual errors can live a very long time if every editor assumes they know less than the original contributor. It would only take a handful of well-meaning users with blind faith in AI before most of the work here turns into factchecking. And thats probably the best case scenario... just wait until an enterprising editor sets up an AI to edit directly. Gregsmi11 (talk) 14:07, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think ChatGPT has access to the internet. (Maybe I'm wrong?) It might be handy if you could say "Give me the URLs for five free activities in <city>", followed by "Okay, https://www.example.com is my favorite of the activities. Now give me a 100-word summary of the activity described on that website." WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Isn't there a risk of copyright violation from AI, too? People have to be responsible for their own words. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:00, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Depending on the AI. If the wordings are derived from a big mass of text, none quoted verbatim, there is no copyright involved. The copyright laws may change because of the "write/draw like NN" problem, but that shouldn't be an issue for us. On the other hand, an AI can reuse phrases, if trained to do that, and if those are long or original enough, the result will be copyvios. –LPfi (talk) 19:58, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I think we'd go crazy trying to find the original source of text once the AI has rewritten and paraphrased it anyway. There's also the less legal, more ethical question of whether it is right for someone to claim authorship over text they retrieved from an AI. The user might be OK from a licence standpoint, but can they say they "wrote" something? Gregsmi11 (talk) 20:23, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Good point. LPfi, uncredited quotes or poor paraphrases don't have to be entirely verbatim to violate copyright. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:50, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The US Copyright Office says that AI-generated content is not written by a human. It is therefore ineligible for copyright protection/automatically in the public domain.

It is possible for an LLM to generate something that matches existing copyrightable text, though it's not really an LLM if it just copies and pastes from its source files. I'm sure you've heard about the w:en:Infinite monkey theorem (the version that went around the playground when I was a kid said "an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time would produce Shakespeare's plays"); LLMs will "randomly" match text much faster than the monkeys would, because they're not actually random, because there are multiple texts to match with (that's the w:en:Birthday problem), and because we don't need an exact match to have a copyvio.

But on our end, a copyvio gets detected the same way, regardless of whether it is intentional, negligent, or accidental, and whether it was generated by a human or an LLM. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:43, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

ChatGPT is at least better than Bard, which has outright lied to me several times. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:36, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Here's an example of a new article that triggers AI content detection- Gwanggyo. If you've spent a lot of time on ChatGPT, you might recognize its "voice" in large parts of the article. Is this problematic? It's certainly no worse than many other new article creations that need template work and copyediting. A 10-second plagiarism check doesn't reveal anything. I'm having difficulty finding the "Gwanggyo Modern library" online, but I'm searching in English, so it's certainly not evidence of a hallucination. Gregsmi11 (talk) 14:07, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I used Bard and ChatGPT for travel ideas when I was in Tokyo and Osaka last month. Both are not bad, but definitely underestimate the time for some activities when I asked them to create itineraries for me. I would say ChatGPT is worse because it told to spend 90 mins in Dotonbori for lunch and exploration, but it'll take 25 mins for me to walk from previous destination to Dotonbori. So that leaves me only 60 mins to eat and explore?! And it didn't schedule anything in Japan after 5pm, which completely neglects the nightlife scene. At least Bard named some concrete evening activities (by name) in Tokyo. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 14:23, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Nagorno-Karabakh

I think it's time to re-breadcrumb this under Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has won the war, the Karabakh Armenians have surrendered, and Armenia decided to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over it. Under the ceasefire brokered by the Russians, Azerbaijan is taking control. The dog2 (talk) 03:01, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd say let's wait until we see the deal to be struck after the talks commencing today. As far as I'm aware, Armenia interestingly never recognized the independence of NKR, so in theory they were recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over the region all the time. Vidimian (talk) 03:17, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Armenia had always been quiet about the issue. But Pashinyan recently explicitly said he recognized Azerbaijani sovereignty over it. And that's when Azerbaijan launched its big offensive. Based on my understanding, all the Russians managed to secure from Aliyev was safe passage for the ethnic Armenian civilians to Armenia if they choose to leave, and a promise to grant Azerbaijani citizenship and the right to practise Christianity to the ethnic Armenians who choose to stay. The dog2 (talk) 03:22, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Azerbaijan has controlled all in and out for a year now anyway and it seems like they will for the future, so since ttcf, I think it's now both de jure and de facto Azerbaijani. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:45, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I read this article, but I would wait until it has been under stable Azerbaijani control for a reasonable period of time – that can be subjective, but I would say we should wait around 18 months from when it's been under full Azerbaijani control until we change the breadcrumbs. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 04:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we need to wait 18 months. If it seems clear that effective Azerbaijani control is here to stay for the foreseeable future, we don't have to wait some arbitrary amount of time. One example is that we recognized de facto Russian control over Crimea quite quickly, and that control held pretty unchallenged until recently. And in this case, Artsakh was never official, so it'll look strange if we continue to recognize it when it has ceased to exist as a de facto independent entity. Even a week or two might be enough, if the outcome is quite clear. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:02, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree. The short-term effect on travellers is that budget accommodation in Armenia may be re-assigned to those evicted from the area. It will be a much slower process to re-settle it with Azeris and transition to a normal civilian province, and the Baku real-estate speculators will get there first. Grahamsands (talk) 14:23, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

We don't know for sure that the Karabakh Armenians will be re-settled in Armenia. There are some rumblings that Pashinyan is not willing to take them in. As of now, it looks like the Russians are the ones leading negotiations on their fate, so there is also a good chance they will be re-settled in Russia instead of Armenia. The dog2 (talk) 18:13, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Wikivoyage for astronomers

• It would be nice if there could be sections for each article on Wikivoyage dedicated to traveling astronomers. Whenever an amateur astronomer traveling with a telescope visits a new location, they need to know information about the local area such as:
  • What nearby locations are publicly accessible at night?
    • Are these locations safe to set up telescopes at?
    • Are there any nighttime hazards (crime, wildlife, trigger-happy police) the astronomer should be aware of?
    • Does the location have space to set up telescopes next to a vehicle (such as in a parking lot) or does the telescope have to be carried to an observing site from the parking location?
    • If the telescope has to be carried to the observing site, how far is the distance to the site from the parking location and is it handicap-accessible (either for wheelchairs or for large telescopes)?
  • For nearby observing sites, what are the horizon altitude angles? While this sounds complicated, this can be measured by taking a single all-sky photograph that shows the sky from horizon to horizon using a circular fisheye lens.
    • At minimum, the traveling astronomer needs to be aware of the presence of horizon obstructions such as trees or buildings, especially toward the east for Sunrise and toward the west for Sunset. A wide-angle photograph (such as from a smartphone camera) taken with clear skies at Sunrise and again at Sunset can easily document this.
    • Locations with zero or negative horizons are very difficult to find and should be noted. These are typically only when facing a large body of water (zero horizon) or from a mountaintop (negative horizon if high enough up and looking down) but can also be from the tops of very tall buildings (though these are not typically open to the public to set up telescopes from).
  • Any comments on local light pollution, air pollution, and/or weather.
    • Is the observing site ploughed of snow in winter?
    • Are there street lights in the parking lot?
    • Are there any unusually high levels of pollens or air pollutants (next to a highway for example)? These can degrade certain optical elements.
  • For locations that are already dedicated for astronomical use (not just some random park nearby) are there any astronomy-specific restrictions such as no white light allowed (red light only) or no electronics allowed (radio-quiet areas near radiotelescopes)?
  • What other astronomy resources are available in the community? These can be observatories, planetariums, local astronomy clubs, recurring star parties, astronomy faculty at nearby colleges/universities, etcetera.
  • An international database of publicly accessible astronomical observing sites can then be cross-referenced along the event paths for rare astronomical events such as eclipses, transits, and occultations.
  • Nicole Sharp (talk) 02:31, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

By all means, start a travel topic, but try to keep it manageable. We're not going to be able to cover all of that for every place on Earth. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:04, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes. I don't think we need the information other than for places that are good destinations for amateur astronomers, and we don't have resources to cover all of them. However, observatories accessible by the public, planetariums, local astronomy clubs and recurring star parties should probably be listed wherever they exist. Astronomy faculties can easily be checked for on university (or college – is astronomy taught at that level?) web pages.

For example, here in Turku, there is light pollution in the city where I live, so the relevant places are a bit farther, where checking sites requires some time and dedication. Roads avoid hilltops, so one needs to use small roads or footpaths to reach any viable location; I wouldn't check any where I am not going anyway (although I might adjust my route or choose destinations to be able to help).

For specific issues: Crime is usually noted on country and city article pages already, enough for you to infer a bit. Very difficult though to know whether an intoxicated group of youngsters could get the idea of messing with your equipment. I couldn't tell whether the levels of pollution here typically have any significant effect on observations. For sunrise and sunset, here some 240° of the horizon has either at some time of the year (so "west and east" are mostly irrelevant, but a wide-angle photograph to the west and one to the east would cover much of the year).

–LPfi (talk) 08:07, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

People who are new to astronomy are always asking me for recommendations on the best spots to observe the night sky. The problem is that I can only recommend places that I have personally been to, which is knowledge typically acquired through trial and error by visiting different locations in person since the information is not otherwise available online. Going someplace after dark (especially with a lot of heavy and expensive scientific equipment) requires an advanced level of local knowledge. Firstly, you have to know which places are not open to the public at night and which are. Especially for local parks, this information is typically not available from the World Wide Web, and you can only find out by going there in person to see if there are any "no entry after dark" signs posted, unless perhaps you call the local police department ahead of time (which can be a good idea especially if you are visiting from out of state). Then even if the location is publicly accessible at night, you have no way of knowing which local spots might become hangouts for drugs or illegal activites after dark. Though you could perhaps try cross-referencing the location with a local newspaper to see if anything criminal has been happening there. Another example of something only a local would know is which parks are ploughed when it snows and which parks are left unploughed when it snows, since this is another datum that is not typically published online. If there is an event like a transit, you might drive an hour to get there only to find out no one has bothered to plough the lot. Nicole Sharp (talk) 12:14, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Interesting sidenote about the importance of reading newspapers — one of the hotels that I reserved in Oklahoma did not have any bad guest reviews online but when I googled the name of the hotel, I found news articles indicating that the hotel had not only been robbed twice within the past year (with the hotel desk clerk being sexually assaulted during the second robbery) but it had also become a location for a child prostitution ring, in addition to several hotel guests being murdered (shot or strangled) during repeated robberies. On top of all that, the hotel across the street from where I had made the reservation had been shut down for infecting the guests with chemical pneumonitis, requiring them to be hospitalized. Needless to say I canceled the reservation to find another hotel in a different part of town. Nicole Sharp (talk) 13:01, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

The same applies to locals. I would also have to check any places I want to recommend. Of course, it is easier for me, but I wouldn't bother with a place much off where I otherwise go (and I am not an astronomer). Some of this can be described on a country level; I know no parks over here that wouldn't be open around the clock. Off light pollution you seldom find any hangouts for anybody (other than perhaps at lean-tos and similar infrastructure) so that's seldom an issue. For national parks, whether access routes are ploughed is told on their web sites. –LPfi (talk) 13:54, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

In my experience, most city parks in the US close during the night. They might vary a bit, e.g., closing a sunset/dusk/after dark/a specific time, but city parks that are officially open 24x7 seem to be rare. How it's enforced is a different question. The park nearest me is officially closed dusk to dawn, and yet there's usually someone out walking a dog, or a parent pushing a stroller with a wakeful baby, or someone cutting through the park on their way home. I've even seen a few astronomy events there late in the evening, and nobody seems to mind any of this.

In California, the state parks mostly seem to have a sunset-to-sunrise closing time, with exceptions for campers. I don't know if this is the typical pattern elsewhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:55, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Anyone interested in astronomy travel should take a look at our existing article, Astronomy. It already has a lot of the basic info that a heavens-oriented traveler might want to know. If there's something genuinely useful that the article lacks, please add it there. Mrkstvns (talk) 20:07, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

24/7 locations

The other thing needed for Wikivoyage articles is a notification on each page for which locations are open 24/7. This could be something like "^[24/7]" or " 🕒" (emoji icon indicating 3 AM) next to the location names to indicate that they are open 24/7, which can be applied to parks as well as to businesses. I know here, there are only 3 businesses in the entire county (Sheetz gas station, Denny's diner, and the truck stop) that are open all night if you need a public restroom, gasoline, or food/drink (Walmart closes at 11 PM). This is extremely useful for anyone traveling at night, not just for astronomers, especially since highway signs for restaurants and gas stations do not indicate which ones are closed at night. This applies to hotels as well, since some hotels do not allow late check-ins. Nicole Sharp (talk) 12:35, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

We usually write "24 hr daily", which should be clear enough (and you could search for that phrase to catch most), but I haven't bothered for parks, as they don't have such restrictions over here. One could add that info to more roadside restaurants. Actually, we seldom tell about them at all, since they are mostly Wikivoyage:Boring. –LPfi (talk) 13:58, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

If there is only one restaurant available for hundreds of miles, regardless of how dull or boring that restaurant might be, it should be absolutely necessary to mention prominently. Nicole Sharp (talk) 15:18, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but that's unlikely to be the case in the lower 48. Even on smaller highways, it's unusual to go 100+ miles without encountering a small town or at least a gas station. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:42, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

As far as I know, Denny's is the only restaurant open in America after 1 AM outside of major urban areas or truck stops. So other than truck stops, the only place you can eat outside of Washington-Baltimore is just Denny's. If there are any other restaurants open 24/7, I would very much like to know and they should be marked on the Wikivoyage pages. Nicole Sharp (talk) 06:38, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Waffle House is another famously 24x7 restaurant. Some convenience stores sell hot food, and some fast food places and other chain restaurants (e.g., some McDonald's, some iHOPs, some Taco Bells) are open 24x7. If you are planning your route around this, and want to avoid the chains, you might want to search for lists like https://www.eatthis.com/best-24-hour-restaurant-state/ in your favorite search engine. If you just want to find something nearby, then a search like https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=Restaurants&find_loc=Southwestern+New+Mexico%2C+NM&open_time=190&start=20 shows all the restaurants listed on Yelp that are open in the middle of the night (I think I set it to 3:10 a.m. on a Monday). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

There are no Waffle Houses here so I will look into that; thank you. That actually might be good for an article page, "chain locations open 24/7" if every single location in the chain is open 24/7 then you don't have to google for opening and closing times. Walmarts are closed at night now so the only ones I know of are Sheetz, Denny's, and chain truck stops such as Love's. I prefer fast food so I do not have to tip but the main issue is access to healthy balanced meals with a full serving of green vegetables (I don't eat salads). Other than Subway, most fast-food restaurants do not serve (non-salad) green vegetables other than a single leaf of lettuce in a cheeseburger. Potatoes are classified as a vegetable by the USA Department of Agriculture but I wouldn't really consider french fries to be a healthy serving of vegetables. Fast food is fine now and then but is not healthy if every single meal is eaten at a fast-food restaurant (Super Size Me). I am going to try to bring canned food though so I have extra vegetables already cooked. Nicole Sharp (talk) 23:03, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Astronomy-friendly locations could be indicated graphically as "🕒🔭" meaning "open at 3 AM; safe for telescopes". Using emoji icons allows to quickly scan the page to find the locations of interest and would require very little change to the current article format in order to add useful information. Nicole Sharp (talk) 12:42, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I would love to see emoji icons added for other locations of special interest such as "👻" (ghost icon) for locations with a history of hauntings that might be of interest to ghost hunters. This should probably be standardized as a Wikivoyage policy page though so everyone is using the icons consistently. Nicole Sharp (talk) 13:09, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Emoji icons are Unicode characters so that also allows searching for them in MediaWiki Search. A search on Wikivoyage for the special character "🔭" would then automatically pull up all pages with telescope-friendly locations. Nicole Sharp (talk) 13:12, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I can't speak to the astronomy scene, but in general WV could really improve the way we link Activities and destinations together. Activity articles such as Surfing, for example, provide good overviews of the topic. But they're not intended to be comprehensive; they cover the famous, iconic, or representative locations. Finding the smaller locations requires some creative advanced search queries, and some luck that someone has mentioned a particular activity in the appropriate listing.

If we had a consistent practice of linking activities mentioned in listings to the topic article, we could use the "what links here" tool to at least get a cumbersome list... I wish we could stick a map on the "what links here" result page or at least sort the results by categories. Gregsmi11 (talk) 16:11, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Tagging each location by what activities you can do there is a good idea. So for example "👻" (ghost emoji) would not be appropriate to use for any location that has had a ghost sighting (such as the White House in Washington, DC, USA) but rather specifically just for locations that are appropriate or recommended for ghost-hunting activities. So for example the typical traveler can't do a ghost-hunting expedition to the White House (at least not without a lot of red tape and permission from the USA President) but there are plenty of other allegedly haunted places that encourage ghost hunters to visit as a form of tourism. Nicole Sharp (talk) 16:30, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

park shutdowns

Small towns and rural areas are going to be overwhelmed with eclipse traffic.  Photo displays what could be miles of vehicles around the small town of Glendo (Wyoming) which had a population of only 205 before the eclipse traffic arrived.

Is there a template available to add to public locations that may be shut down and closed to the public due to exceeding their visitor capacity for the upcoming October 2023 Annular Solar Eclipse? I just heard back from Chaco Culture National Historical Park and there is a possibility that the park will be closed to visitors due to the extreme number of vehicles that are expected to arrive on the day of the eclipse (much more than the park can handle). I remember reading about similar problems for the August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse (see links below). October 2023 might be even worse as what are likely going to be millions of people from Los Angeles to New York City all traveling to the eclipse path in order to witness the Annular Solar Eclipse. Nicole Sharp (talk) 00:15, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

• "w:Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017#Planning"
• "w:Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017#Post-eclipse traffic problems"
• Nicole Sharp (talk) 01:38, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

No, I'd typically use {{cautionbox}} to each destination affected. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:30, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

• Done. However, it might be good to make some eclipse-specific templates since this will happen again for the USA in April 2024. Nicole Sharp (talk) 02:53, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I would be surprised if the October annular eclipse draws a very large travelling audience, for the reasons stated on the solar eclipse page, but that will need to be re-thought if it does so. All 550-some city pages for the 2024 total eclipse in North America have already been populated. But the choke points are highly specific, so a template isn't the answer. For Exmouth in 2023 that choke was 1200 km long, as a single coast highway funneled everyone into the tiny corner of Australia that had totality. For 2024 there is a 7000 km viewing corridor with access and amenities all along the way, and at best 50-50 viewing prospects, so over-crowding is unlikely. Grahamsands (talk) 08:03, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I live in central Texas, smack dab in the path for the October annular eclipse, so I'm definitely doing some planning: I'm gonna check to make sure I paid the electric bill so if it gets dark in my house, I can switch on the lights. Mrkstvns (talk) 15:45, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Board games

It recently came to my attention Wikivoyage (under Travel topics > Cultural attractions ) has thematic guides for Chess, Go, Xiangqi (Chinese chess) and Shogi (Japanese chess). And apparently, Monopoly, which IMHO is a bit of an Easter Egg but oh well, some my find it amusing :) Anyway, as a board game fan I now have a plan to create an entry for board games. A while back (~10 years...) I have in fact written guides on a board game portal for board gaming in Poland which I presume I can copy here with some minor c/e since I am the author and can licence it under CC-BY-SA as I wish; I can probably write something for Korea. But I doubt I can find the time/motivation to do it for most other regions (although there are useful guides on BGG that can be mined for information). Anyway, for when I start, I guess I'll just use Wikivoyage:Quick travel topic article template modelled after those of other games I listed? Is there anyone who's interested in this and wants to be pinged when I create it so they can help expand this? One MoS issue that I have, comparing my guide from BGG to what we have on Chess and like is how do we handle mentioning/listing of social media groups / websites / online stores? Thing is, in board game area, physical stores/cafes come and go, but social media groups and online stores have a more enduring presence in my experience. They are useful for hobbyists - a lot of common questions I see from folks, and that includes tourists or people moving to an area for a few months/years (students, temp jobs) are "how can I connect with gamers in my area" and "how can I buy games cheaply". And that cannot be answered well without linking to local Facebook/Meetup groups and online stores. Any thoughts on how to handle this within WV guidelines for external links and such? I.e. can we link to such non-physical entities from our travel topic guides? Piotrus (talk) 07:42, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

It would indeed be a good travel topic, where there isn't a "strict MoS". I wouldn't know how one should be written, though. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:00, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

To answer your question about non-physical entities: we do have to be careful about featuring links to organizations that are not about travel, so it really depends on the context. What do you mean by an "Easter Egg"? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:43, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I mean that the usefulness of that particular page is likely pretty low. Monopoly fandom is rather small, compared to the proper board game fandom (and proper board gamers don't really play Monopoly, which is just a bad, bad game). So what I mean is that any serious board gamers looking at our coverage will be like - Chess, ok, Go, Shogi, good, good... Monopoly - seriously? :) Shrug. Somebody had fun making that page and it has some uber mild utility and is within the scope, I guess, it is just such a minor trivial topic to cover when so many others are missing. Oh well, wikis :) Piotrus (talk) 02:49, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, Monopoly is a very luck-based game, FWIW. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 03:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

But more to the point for a travel wiki, Monopoly is a very place-based game, so it really lends itself to travel. Plus, loads of people played it as children. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I know – it's just a game disliked by board game clubs, hence my earlier reply. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:38, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Detailed regional categories at the top of the page

Hello，I want to know about the detailed regional categories at the top of the page how to add step by step

Ya'an Asia > East Asia > China > Southwest China > Sichuan > East Sichuan > Ya'an Like how this detailed classification is added to the page

Dazhou I would like to add to this article LIYULUN (talk) 14:40, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Please see WV:Breadcrumb navigation for details.

In short, Ya'an is marked {{IsPartOf|East Sichuan}} at the end of the article, while East Sichuan is marked {{IsPartOf|Sichuan}} and so on and so forth, and that's how we have the "breadcrumb trail" at the top of the pages. Vidimian (talk) 15:08, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

[edit conflict] See Special:Diff/4737276/4737295 for how to do it. The IsPartOf template is included in the article templates, such as the one you get by clicking "City" (in black, above the edit window) at the page you get when starting a new article. It seems you started the article without the templates, adding the section headers later, which is OK, but then somebody needs to add things like this. –LPfi (talk) 15:14, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I learned something else to teach to my students for our next activity :) Piotrus (talk) 02:50, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Nice. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 03:16, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Great. Vidimian (talk) 16:36, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Is linking to Wikipedia still not permitted outside listings?

As I was reading the entry for Yuhuan, I noticed the sentence "Yuhuan city has China's national 4A level scenic spots". This made me google for what are those 4A spots, and so I learned about wikipedia:AAAAA Tourist Attractions of China. While ideally WV would havei its own page on this topic, since we don't, I think any reader of this article would be best served by a link to Wikipedia. Thoughts? Better than "MoS blah blah" (I mean Wikivoyage:Links to Wikipedia)? Because AFAIK Wikivoyage:The traveller comes first is a rule as well? I am looking forward to mental gymnastics of seeing folks explain how linking to Wikipedia here would not be in travellers best interest :P Piotrus (talk) 08:20, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

That link violates Wikivoyage:Links to Wikipedia and would have to be proposed as an exception, presumably at Talk:China. I would oppose partly because it's a long list, and that's also why a directly equivalent Wikivoyage article seems unlikely. The other consideration is that any information that's important for travelers should be here, and we don't want to discourage people from adding such content by directing them away from the site. But rather than adding such a long list here, it might be less unwieldy for there to be several Wikivoyage articles covering this long list on a regional basis, with each one linking to a Chinese government site and probably also the Wikipedia article, but with useful though quite brief descriptions of every attraction - something that's notably absent from quite a few of the listings in the Wikipedia list article.

Finally, going back to Yuhuan, the point would be to mention what those local 4A attractions are. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:44, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

It looks like Rating systems needs a section on Asia. This would be a great addition to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:29, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Good thinking. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:23, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

radiation dosimeters

Not many people are watching this page so cross-posting here. Any assistance in picking out a radiation dosimeter for nuclear tourism in New Mexico is appreciated:

talk:nuclear tourism#dosimetry

The main question is whether I should get a dosimeter that detects gamma rays up to 1.5 MeV or one that detects gamma rays up to 3.0 MeV? The higher energy seems better especially if looking for potassium-40 decays from bananas, but the lower end for x-rays is also lower: 28 keV instead of 48 keV. My main concern is if going down to 28 keV instead of a lower limit of 48 keV might detect too much background radiation or does that not matter? For reference, a typical medical x-ray is at about 100 keV [2]. Nicole Sharp (talk) 10:26, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

What is your actual goal? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:30, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I am assuming that any nuclear testing sites that are open to the public have been evaluated as safe enough to visit without needing a radiation dosimeter. If that is the case, then having a dosimeter is simply a matter of scientific curiosity and not imperative for personal safety. However, even if there is no medical need for a dosimeter, there can still be a psychological comfort from having a dosimeter to put one's mind at ease that the radiation levels at the nuclear testing site are indeed safe. Outside of nuclear tourism, having a dosimeter is still useful since it will measure accumulated dose from the increased background radiation when visiting high altitudes, air travel, etc. A roundtrip air flight from New York City to Los Angeles is about 40 microsieverts whereas spending one hour at Trinity Test Site is about 5000 microsieverts, compared to the average background radiation in the USA being 3000 microsieverts per year. Nicole Sharp (talk) 12:45, 27 September 2023 (UTC)