Wikivoyage:Guide articles

A guide article is a status rating for any article in Wikivoyage that is essentially complete. This is what a Wikivoyage article is intended to be. Not only would you not need to consult another guide, you'd really have no reason to want to: it's all here.

Guide articles aren't necessarily perfect... just very close. For example, a city guide might lack a static map, some of the listings might not exactly match our manual of style. The article may have perfect spelling and grammar but the prose is a bit dry and wikipedic. This prevents them from being considered "star" articles, which are the ones we hold up as examples of just how great a Wikivoyage article can become.

See also: Stub articles, Outline articles, Usable articles, Star articles.

Identification

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The criteria for what makes a "guide" article varies depending on what the subject is. For example, an article about a city must have multiple hotel and restaurant listings, but that doesn't make sense for an article about an entire region, which should instead have a listing of the cities in that region. National parks may have limited amenities by design, to keep them in their natural state; if one small, isolated remote village offers few or no options, its article should simply say so. Obviously the criteria for an itinerary, travel topic or phrasebook would be even more different.

See Project:Article status for an overview of article status criteria, or the following links for guide criteria for specific article types:

A complete list of all current "guide" articles can be found in Category:Guide articles.

What to do with them

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If you find an article that meets the criteria for "guide" but hasn't been tagged as such, or if you improve an article to the point that it qualifies, please tag it.

There is special markup in our software to mark something as a guide article. Unlike the "stub" tag, which is generic enough to apply to any kind of article, we have different tags for the different kinds of articles. For example, the tag for a guide about a city looks like this: {{guidecity}} which makes this appear on the page:

This city travel guide to Guide articles has guide status. It has a variety of good, quality information including hotels, restaurants, attractions and travel details. Please contribute and help us make it a star!

The other kinds of "guide" tags are {{guidedistrict}}, {{guideregion}}, {{guidecountry}}, {{guideairport}}, {{guidepark}}, {{guidediveguide}}, {{guidetopic}}, {{guidephrasebook}}, and {{guideitinerary}}.

This district travel guide to Guide articles has guide status. It has a variety of good, quality information including hotels, restaurants, attractions and arrival info. Please contribute and help us make it a star!
This region travel guide to Guide articles has guide status. It has well developed information throughout the entire article, and throughout all of the articles on destinations within the region. Please contribute and help us make it a star!
This country travel guide to Guide articles has guide status. It has a variety of good, quality information about the country, including links to places to visit, attractions, arrival and departure info. Please contribute and help us make it a star!
This huge airport travel guide to Guide articles has guide status. It has a variety of good, quality information including flights, ground transport, restaurants, arrival and departure info. Please contribute and help us make it a star!
This park travel guide to Guide articles has guide status. It has a variety of good, quality information about the park including attractions, activities, lodging, campgrounds, restaurants, and arrival/departure info. Please contribute and help us make it a star!
This dive guide to Guide articles has guide status. It has a variety of good, quality information including location, conditions and equipment, and info on marine life and other sights. Please contribute and help us make it a star!
This travel topic about Guide articles has guide status. It has good, detailed information covering the entire topic. Please contribute and help us make it a star!
This Guide articles has guide status. It covers all the major topics for traveling without resorting to English. Please contribute and help us make it a star!
This itinerary to Guide articles has guide status. It has good, detailed information covering the entire route. Please contribute and help us make it a star!

You can add one of these messages at the bottom of the page. This tells readers that this article should be all they'll need to plan their visit... but acknowledges that there's always room for improvement (and updates) and invites them to make the article even better.

Improve

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If you find a "guide" article and you can see what's holding it back from becoming a "star"... plunge forward! If you know your way around Illustrator or Inkscape, make a map for it. If you have a good eye for detail, comb through the listings and fix any formatting mistakes. If you have a flair for the English language, give the text a full-body massage with a happy ending, and make it sing. Give the article that final nudge from "great" to "superb".

The specific criteria varies depending on the kind of article (i.e. city, country, etc.) but a star article is as good as it gets. At that point it's a guide to be proud of, and should be nominated to be a "star".

When an article is just starting out, we often need all the information we can get to get the article started, and style and detail comes second. Even some touting is occasionally tolerated just to get information in the guide. Additions to guide articles should try to maintain the articles quality, and comply with the style guidelines whenever possible. However, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't always plunge forward to add your latest discovery at a destination.