Requests for comment/Travel Guide

This is a subpage; for more information, see the Requests for comments page.

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Proposal: That we as the Wikimedia community ask the WMF to approve a Travel Guide project and allocate resources to support any technical aspects of starting the new project. This work would combine efforts on many free knowledge travel sites, some of which (e.g., Wikivoyage) want to migrate completely with their content and communities to the new travel guide project.

Please be sure to read over Travel Guide and Talk:Travel Guide for more background on this proposal.

Votes and comments

moved from Talk:Travel Guide

Support

1. Support This proposal will have benefits for the WM movement through expanding our community. As travel is educational in nature and thus a travel guide an education resource this is in line with our mission to: " empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content" --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:16, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
2. Support Humans are natural explorers. We read and contribute to WM in order to explore new ideas and learn about new people, artefacts and places. But sometimes reading is not enough and the only way to truly understand a subject is to experience it first-hand. en:Great Barrier Reef is a good article, but what will it cost me to see this wonder for myself, how do I get there, where do I stay, who can I trust to take me on a diving tour that will not damage the reef? Those are questions that an encyclopaedia can never answer, but a travel guide can. --NJR ZA (talk) 05:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
3. Support WM is a natural home for a wiki-based travel guide, and the Internet community is not well-served by having such an educational resource hosted in less-friendly hands. -J1729 (talk) 10:52, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
4. Support A travel guide wiki certainly fits into the Wikimedia Foundation's mission of making educational content available worldwide and for free. WMF gets an existing and mature wiki with a well-developed culture that is compatible with Wikimedia's own. The Wikitravel and Wikivoyage communities get the benefit of an established host, and the sum of the world's knowledge is improved in the process Ravikiran r (talk) 17:06, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
5. Support, provided that the new project be founded in a way that makes it possible for the Wikivoyage community to join in a merger of equals. By and large, I think Wikimedia projects could gain a great deal by including a travel guide. As "Wikitravel" already is a registered name, I suggest to call the new project "Wikimedia Voyage", or "Wikivoyage", if the Wikivoyage community agrees.--Aschmidt (talk) 21:40, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

   Yes would be happy with Wikivoyage and definitely see the two groups joining as equals.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:05, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

   I don't think we are discussing naming yet, but I would be quite happy is we simply call it Wikimedia Travel with travel.wikimedia.org as url. --NJR ZA (talk) 16:20, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

6. Support. As has been pointed out by others, a travel guide is complementary to the educational mission of WMF and fills a niche that falls outside of the encyclopedic goals of Wikipedia. -- Wrh2 (talk) 02:32, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
7. Support I really need dumps of WT, and the current host of WT does not want to release dumps. Nicolas1981 (talk) 05:24, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
8. Support. No doubt, that travelling is education. Why so many people watch documentations about foreign cultures? And I strongly agree Wrh2. There is a niche in the WP content. We often see discussions about content that should be removed from WP and fits better to a Travel Guide. Can not estimate how many usefull information are shredded already. The WT/WV contributors are keen on providing geo referenced information as well. This can be an important input for the Wikipedia and Wikidata. I would love to se Wikivoyage as the project's name. -- DerFussi (talk) 06:00, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
9. Support As mentionned above, I believe a travel wiki brings a new perspective to Wikimedia's educational purpose and that it definitely falls under our mission of making knowledge accessible. notafish }<';> 08:14, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
10. Support I think User:Ravikiran r set out the reasons perfectly for why this is a good idea. Mike Peel (talk) 08:15, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
11. Support As mentioned above, travel information is practical knowledge and education. This is also the reason why the Wikivoyage association is supported by the German tax authorities. --RolandUnger (talk) 09:31, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
12. I support the proposal based on the arguments I gave on the wikimedia-l mailing list. Travelling is one of the ways, if not the most important ways, of acquiring and dissemination of free knowledge, and in this perspective a travel guide fits well into our Mission. I had specific objections which may be relevant for the realization (for instance, I do not believe in the universal travel guide which is equally useful for everyone, in real life one always have different types of the guides which target specific audiences), but I do not think we should discuss these objections at this stage.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:49, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
13. Support I see a fit in our missin and a huge benefit for all involved parties here. I already look forward having Collection Extension available on the new wiki-based travel guide... --Manuel Schneider^(bla) (+/-) 11:27, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
14. Support Clearly within the scope of the Wikimedia movement, and the benefits for all the involved would be many: the project would get a world-leading hosting platform and a continuously up-to-date mediawiki installation; two communities with the same goal could be re-joined to work together, making the whole endeavor more efficient and productive; the community could grow with a fresh influx of new editors; Localization support would be greatly improved, leading to a truly global wiki travel guide project; not to mention the other benefits listed at Wiki Travel Guide#Benefits --Waldir (talk) 14:08, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
15. Support. A major lump of knowledge that is not covered by any other Wikimedia project at present, and an extremely useful one at that. SpinningSpark 16:50, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
16. Support The communities of Wikipedia and Wikitravel have strong links for a long time. Rein N. (talk) 21:23, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
17. Support. The project is in scope for Wikimedia and seems to have good potential, especially with the freely-licensed material that is already available. Jafeluv (talk) 07:56, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
18. Support. I would also support this including guidebook-type information for locals and citizens of communities, as well as for travellers. Let us assimilate the city wikis!--Pharos (talk) 19:35, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

    Yes! Great idea. NYCwiki has been mentioned at Wiki Travel Guide#Educational in nature, but making this more explicit and generic, inviting all city wikis to join, would be great. --Waldir (talk) 09:24, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

19. Support. Absolutely, this seems like it would be beneficial to everyone. the wub "?!" 20:00, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
20. Support. Contributors, readers, and re-users of Wikitravel (which of course includes many Wikimedians) will benefit from accelerated feature development, bug fixes, and database dumps; Wikimedia will benefit from an enlarged contributor base and readership; and there are tons of potential synergies to exploit (collaboration on map-making is a great example—check out all the original maps being made at Wikitravel!). As Wikitravel and Wikivoyage are established, mature wiki communities, this project should be a guaranteed success in terms of organization, content, and contributor base. And for lovers of warm fuzzies, moving forward with this proposal would offer us the happy possibility to reunite our splintered communities, and forge a new, stronger one in the process. --Peter ^Talk 21:25, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
21. Support With a travel and aviation background, it has always miffed me why WMF projects didn't tackle this area long before. Well-travelled people are generally well-informed people, and this goes to the very basis of what WMF projects are about -- encouraging people to be better informed. So absolutely support. Russavia (talk) 22:33, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
22. Support I think this is the best solution for all three communities concerned. -- MarkJaroski (talk) 04:50, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
23. Support As others have said, travelling and travel information is educational, and there are existing communities and information to get this off the ground and make it a success. - Shaundd (talk) 04:46, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
24. Support. The existing WT/WV content is a great educational resource not only on travelling, but also about culture, history and geography. - Cardboardbird (talk) 14:03, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
25. Support If the existing WT/WV communities like the idea of joining us, we should welcome them! --trm^ger 19:20, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
26. Support Travel is definitely educational in nature, and this will be a great complement to our existing geography coverage. Calliopejen1 (talk) 03:37, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
27. Support. Wikitravel fits into the Wikimedia Foundation's mission: educational content available worldwide and for free. And whoever visit other countries before know that traveling is knowledge! Benoit Rochon (talk) 05:00, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
28. Support. Mutually beneficial, especially considering the spinoff effects to other Wikimedia projects. MER-C (talk) 11:58, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
29. Support. This proposal would greatly enhance the Wikimedia family. Yann (talk) 12:42, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
30. Support. Would be great if this could help to integrate WT/WV and bring them back together; the project fits well with our other projects. —Nightstallion (?) 12:58, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
31. Support A welcome member of the family. Main concern is the reliability of the info, knowing how dodgy a site as tripadvisor is. Night of the Big Wind (talk) 17:17, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
32. Support I'd always hoped this day would come, and am glad to see it might arrive soon. PhnomPencil (talk) 20:23, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
33. Support for many of the above reasons. It will enhance the diversity of "products" and opportunities in the WM family of communities. Imzadi1979 (talk) 20:44, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
34. Support Hopefully the new travel wiki community will grow fast as soon as all Wikimedia sister projects will be interconnected for everyone's benefit. Fogg (talk) 00:13, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
35. Support. As a longtime bureaucrat/admin on Wikitravel who has pretty much given up editing due to the current owners' neglect of the site and a Wikipedia user of nearly 10 years' standing, I fully welcome this long-overdue move. Jpatokal (talk) 11:50, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
    • Wikitravel is very glad to have you back, now that the 1.17 site upgrade is complete and new features are being added. If you have any concerns about the site, please feel free to contact an active admin -- I'm sure they will tell you how well the site is running!--IBobi (talk) 20:45, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
36. Support. I think it's a useful complement of existing wm projects. --ArséniureDeGallium (talk) 16:06, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
37. I Support the proposal, first and foremost as an avenue to save Wikitravel, which has been running on fumes for quite some since the brand owners lack even the most basic understanding of how the collaborative web works, and besides doesn't seem to be all that interrested since the expected revenue streams have not materialized - This has cost the project some its of most valued editors and adminitrators. Coming under the Wikimedia umbrella is the only avenue I see where we can escape the current mismanagement with meaningful editor retention, and hence save thousands of hours of work voulenteers have contributed to the project in the exact same spirit as most of us to do other wikimedia projects. Secondly two quotes from these discutions clearly shows why a travel wiki has a place under the said umbrella; "Travel is an avenue of education, possibly a more important one than an encyclopedia" and "Frankly, every single time I've read a travel guide.... I've learned something". Besides as administrator on wikitravel I have read more wikipedia city articles than most, and there clearly is a need for an alterntive place to put destination related content than in the current encyclopedic form of those articles. Stefan Ertmann (talk) 21:02, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
38. Support. A wonderful complement to the existing Wikimedia projects. Fits well and there is certainly no good reason not to. Serves the Wikimedia Foundations Goal and Vision. Plus it's been far too long since a new project has been started :-) Dovi (talk) 10:17, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
39. Support. I don't find the arguments about NPOV that convincing and they smack heavily of Wikipedianism (at Wikinews and Wiktionary and other projects, eager Wikipedians have to be reminded that they are no longer at Wikipedia!). I'm a big fan of inter-wiki collaboration (when it works), and building out a travel guide is something where being tied in with the other wikis is useful. Think of it as tourism-related portals onto the existing wealth of Wikimedia content. Take a city like London or Paris and think: we've got interesting Wikipedia articles about that city, we've got a whole wealth of photos, we've got work being done by the GLAM partners, we've got Wikinews, we can link it into Wiktionary for local dialects... a non-commercial port/fork/recasting of Wikitravel that melds more freely into the other WMF projects could be extremely useful. The other way to deal with the NPOV concerns is like this: think of the articles as a series of if-then statements, and just apply something like Wikipedia's UNDUE weight. "If you are a business traveler, then x", "if you are an impoverished student, then y", "if you love art, go to museums a, b and c" etc. That doesn't eliminate the NPOV issues, but it certainly reduces them quite substantially. Then you develop community consensus on what are 'valid' if-then statements that the guide answers. Travel guides that exist on the market already cater for different types of people: there are budget or student travel guides, gap year travel guides, walking or cycling guides, guides for people who want to party, guides for people who love bookshops and culture, guides for gay/lesbian travellers... you name it, there's a different frame you can put on the concept. —Tom Morris (talk) 22:29, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
    • Wikiravel uses a price index for hotels, restaurants etc. How about Budget, midprice and luxery as index? --Rein N. (talk) 06:52, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
40. Support. I know very well from running my own Mediawiki projects that 1. a few people systematically maintaining many such projects requires much less work/overhead than many people managing many projects; 2. WMF's people are much more skilled and professional at it than a random webmaster, especially when it comes to scaling; 3. WMF projects naturally get more editors and more interwiki links than external wikis, because of global accounts, because editors trust them more, and because editors get a greater boost to their reputation for editing a WMF project than an external one. These are all very good things for Wikitravel. Will it "save" Wikitravel from falling into decay? That remains to be seen, but I think if they promote some good admins and get cooperation from devs on necessary settings changes, they can take any necessary measures to preserve the active content. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:27, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
41. Support; this is an opportunity to reduce some of the duplication of effort (vis a vis images and maps, and technical improvements) on Wikitravel. How many times have I wished I could just link to a Commons file instead of downloading and uploading it? Technical support from the site's current owners is sparse at best, and they are learning MediaWiki as they go. Waiting for them to figure out how to operate a wiki is killing the community. LtPowers (talk) 01:19, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
    • Small note: including Commons files in any Mediawiki wiki is as simple as turning on InstantCommons. Dcoetzee (talk) 20:32, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
      • Sadly, Wikitravel is currently running under MediaWiki: 1.11.2 (r24791), not MediaWiki 1.16 (r59428). Slow updating of Mediawiki is only one of our problems with our current host, IB --Rein N. (talk) 06:09, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
      • Yes, what Rein said. IB claims to be in the midst of an upgrade, but we'll all believe it when we see it. If we can get InstantCommons turned on, great. LtPowers (talk) 14:32, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
        • Next week we can try it out after the update to Mediawiki 1.17. Rein N. (talk) 15:26, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
          • The upgrade was completed and Commons is active and functional, as is the rest of the site!--IBobi (talk) 20:41, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
42. Support. As a WT contributor (:en and :ru), I feel that joining WM would be an excellent opportunity for invigorating the very idea of free travel guide. The detailed reasoning has been laid out earlier in this thread, so I simply add my voice and look forward to working on the new project! Atsirlin (talk) 15:21, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
43. Support. I'm one of two founders of Wikitravel, and I think the project would do well with the WMF. --Evan (talk) 12:20, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
44. Support. Agree with most that has been said above :-) --Globe-trotter (talk) 23:56, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
45. Support. Very interested in the possibility of a Wiki Travel Guide among WMF projects. One question is what kind of technical support it really will get? Obviously, I think it would be much better than the current situation, but then sister projects like Wikisource sometimes get a bit neglected when it comes to tech support and especially feature requests. But then volunteers can get involved with the tech stuff and I think there are number of Wiki Travel techies and others who can help. Aude (talk) 16:35, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
46. Support. As a new contributor to the Wikitravel community, I can see how IB is tearing the place apart. Their tech support is abysmal, and it's causing the wiki to lose many editors/admins, which will result in the loss of viewers. This is a great opportunity to save the ailing Wikitravel content and community. JamesA 11:30, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
    • I hope you have a chance to test drive the new site, and view firsthand how quickly and comprehensively technical issues and feature requests are being responded to; in fact this has been the case for over a year, but now that the MW upgrade is complete I think you'll see a whole new site. Enjoy it.--IBobi (talk) 20:49, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
    1. Yes, I have had a chance, and I have experience the usual slow loading speeds. I have also noticed nothing being done about the feature requests, plus the huge number of bug reports, especially the login/create account issue which really irritates me. JamesA (talk) 10:59, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
47. Support. Author on german Wikipedia and german Wikivoyage. --Dirk Schmidt (talk) 12:32, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
48. Support Sounds like a useful complement for the Wikimedia universum. Raymond (talk) 14:28, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
49. Support. Author on german Wikitravel - The german Wikitravel has no aktiv Admins since January 2012 -- Knut 84.58.154.137 20:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
50. Support Ruud Koot (talk) 00:04, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
51. Support Let's create a Wiki Travel Guide that's really good. Grauesel (talk) 08:16, 13 June 2012 (UTC) (WP:de and WV editor)
52. Support A good complement to the existing Wikimedia projects. --Wvk (talk) 20:58, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
53. Support (lately rather inactive) admin on WV and member of Wikivoyage e.V. - Having been at WV almost since the beginning and being aware of the situation at WT, I think becoming part of the WMF would be beneficial to all involved parties. It would re-unite WV and WT, allow to complement each other as far as language versions are concerned and allow a more direct and efficient collaboration with WMF projects. This of course just in addition to all other main advantages already mentioned. --Mulleflupp (talk) 13:13, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
54. Support Sounds like a fine complement to our projects. --Holder (talk) 18:53, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
55. Support - a dream can come true. We hoped for years to be able to create a travel guide that is not only free but also part of the wikimedia movement. So why waiting any longer. Admin on Wikivoyage - we are ready. --Der Reisende (talk) 11:15, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
56. Support - finally! I'm one of two founders of Hitchwiki and asked for a database dump of Wikitravel back in 2004 :) Guaka (talk) 21:01, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
57. Support: Good to see this possibility coming to light. This is a chance to save wikitravel that struggles under the management of it's commercial owners. It makes sense for a wiki travel guide to exist under the Wikimedia umbrella. Having a wiki based travel guide would also be well within wikimedia's educational mandate. --Keithonearth (talk) 19:40, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
58. Support Admin on Wikitravel en:, pt:, and es:. I've been hoping for this for years. IB's neglect has caused Wikitravel's once vibrant communities to largely fall apart. It will be great to have a fresh start in a more supportive environment.Texugo (talk) 03:41, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
59. Support I was a very active admin and supporter of the project, and left entirely due to the project falling into the hands of Internet Brands. Stuck it out for a good while, but it quite simply isn't going to ever flourish in its current setup. Let's change that. – cacahuate ^talk 03:50, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
60. Support - Semi-regular user on Wikipedia and Wikitravel. Agree with everything above. Eco84 (talk) 04:26, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
61. Support with a reservation - I am an administrator on Wikitravel and a longtime user and sometime editor on Wikipedia. I approve of the Wikipedia project, which I see as a revival of the medieval concept of collective authorship for the computer age, complete with marginalia (the talk pages), and I definitely see the advantages of Wikitravel being brought under the Wikimedia umbrella. However, I do not think making it NPOV would be useful to travelers. So let's please talk more about NPOV. Wikitravel does not have an NPOV policy, nor do I think one would be beneficial. Travel guides have to have some degree of appraisal built into them, in terms of which things are deemed as attractions (e.g.: the Raffles Hotel in Singapore gets a photo, whereas the Holiday Inn does not) and which restaurants and hotels are and are not listed. If Wikitravel is taken under the Wikipedia umbrella, would we have to use some circumlocutions - "if, then" statements as per Tom Morris' remarks - to get around an NPOV policy that would be imposed on Wikitravel? Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:49, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

    See #NPOV below: Wikimedia has made it clear that Wikitravel will be allowed to retain existing policies, including "the traveller comes first". Jpatokal (talk) 23:42, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

    Thanks. Reservation withdrawn. Fully support. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:33, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

62. Support - Quite new contributor on Wikitravel. Would love to see the guide as part of WM. Jjtk (talk) 07:15, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
63. Support. Waiting for this for a long time. Admin on Wikitravel en:, Vidimian (talk) 20:56, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
64. Support. I have come very close to walking away from WT many times due to considerable frustrations with the functionality of the site. A considerable body of contribution time has been lost to server errors and similar frustrations. It is a great project in principal and offers a considerable asset to travellers. However we must be careful to ensure the outcome, (or the quest for it) does not break the project. The proposal may offer the opportunity to improve or enhance both the WP and the travel related project. Some discussion might be appropriate in regard to the different culture of consensus and conflict resolution apparent in the two separate domains. WT and WP have a quite different culture in that regard and I am sure other editors here who contribute to both projects will be familiar with the different outlooks and style in seeking 'consensus'.-- Felix505 (talk) 07:59, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
65. Support. Formerly an active admin and contributor to Wikitravel en:. Basically, what cacahaute said above. Gorilla Jones (talk) 15:00, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
66. Support. Former admin on Swedish Wikitravel (http://wikitravel.org/sv/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Jonas_Ryberg) who dropped out when WT has handed over to Internet Brands, currently adding information regarding rail travel to English site. I fully support this move, it's long overdue. Jonas Ryberg (talk) 20:21, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
67. Support, It will be pleasant to work with upload times that don't allow me to make a cup of tea while I wait, or crash and lose my edits. Ok to be fair that can also happen on WP, but the difference in speed and frequency is very noticeable when uploading large files. Also I prefer to upload only once to Commons. Cheers! Pbsouthwood (talk) 15:15, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

    Using files that are available on Commons is already possible after the resent Mediawiki upgrade on Wikitravel, without the need of reupload. Rein N. (talk) 10:43, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

    • Read and upload times are very good since the upgrade, actually.--IBobi (talk) 20:53, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
68. Support, Emperyan-message/ileti-WMTR 13:00, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
69. Support Amazing idea. W.D. (talk) 14:01, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
70. Support Very good idea. I am in support if it should there enough potential contributors to such a wiki. LouriePieterse 15:03, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
71. Support- A great idea and useful project. I have no problems with this. Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 15:05, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
72. Support. A Wonderful project to start.--Shijualex (talk) 17:03, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
73. Support. Complements existing Wikimedia projects, large potential to further mission&vision moreso than would occur if main forks outside Wikimedia. Mike Linksvayer (talk) 17:18, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
74. Support Absolutely! --Iketsi (talk) 17:22, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
75. Support Ja natuurlijk/selbstverständlich!, Oui biensur!, Sì va benissimo!, Yes of course! etc.
    Kind regards, Klaas ‌ V 18:18, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
76. Support This seems like a great way to complement Wikipedia. Argos'Dad (talk) 19:40, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
77. For. I've been lookin' for free travel guides for a while; this is pretty much it. 68.173.113.106 21:55, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
78. Support, as proposed. Craig Franklin (talk) 00:17, 7 July 2012 (UTC).
79. Support - there are things existing projects say they're "not", and travel guides is one of them.--Jasper Deng (talk) 01:53, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
80. Support - So long as Wikitravel is the project being absorbed - would not support a duplication. --108.80.181.47 15:29, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
81. Fully support. Saint Johann (ru) 21:22, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
82. Support - sounds like a project perfectly matching our designs. Pundit (talk) 21:45, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
83. Support. mabdul 21:51, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
84. Support, with Philippines backing up. --Exec8 (talk) 02:32, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
85. Support --Dede2008 (talk) 05:44, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
86. Support This is definitely more than a travel guide on Wikibooks. :)--Nickanc (talk) 18:22, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
87. Support I like using WT I think its a great site, but I have only ever edited there half heartedly because I hate the idea of a for profit organisation benefiting monetarily from something I'm giving for free to other readers, and from the reaction from the WT community commenting here that others feel th same.--KTo288 (talk) 19:36, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
88. Support sounds good to me. --Claritas (talk) 19:45, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
89. This has long been the most obvious hole in the family of sister projects. Courcelles 22:02, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
90. Support A great positive step forward for everybody. -- Elelicht (talk) 23:03, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
91. Support, and I intend to be an active member of the project.-Gadfium (talk) 23:41, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
92. Support as it falls within the scope of our movement -free [travel] knowledge for everyone in their own language. --Jewbask (talk) 02:11, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
93. Support This would be a great contribution to the Wikimedia community, only strengthening it as a whole. -- Forty Seven Nine (talk) 01:03, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
94. Support - our two communities evoluated until now quite independantly but by sharing the same vision, so it’s great to fuse. By seeing some comment about city wikis, I’m not sure it would be desirable for all city wikis (I’m thinking for instance to Wiki-Brest or Wiki-Rennes who are acting as a local website for local history). ~ Seb35 [^_^] 07:07, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
95. Support. A quick look around on Wikitravel shows that its community morale is low, and spam is rife. I think that a Wiki Travel Guide project on WMF will be a great addition to our family of projects, and what's more, it will hopefully bring with it not just one, but two existing communities of editors. Much better than starting from scratch! This, that and the other (talk) 07:26, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
96. Support, per many of the arguments above. WT/WV and its community have achieved good things, and supporting them to do more is well within the scope of our mission and a worthwhile use of our resources. Andrew Gray (talk) 10:50, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
97. Support. Wikitravel is a great resource, and if the community behind it thinks this is a good move, I can't see any reason not to do it. -98.209.136.52 12:57, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
98. Support - we need a new project after about 7 years. This will be a valuable addition. WikiTravel has lots of valuable content.--Kozuch (talk) 15:38, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
99. Support I think rejoining of wikitravel and wikivoyage and geting it truely free is a good case.--Saehrimnir (talk) 15:47, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
100. Strong Support. Suspending the issue of technical limitations, this would be an amazing addition to the WMF family. The travel resources currently available on the Internet are highly commercialized, so a freely licensed travel wiki with a NPOV policy would be a great asset to Wikimedians and society in general. As an expert in travel & tourism, I would personally be interested in contributing to such a project (currently I'm turned off by the commercial nature and administrative neglect of WikiTravel). As for naming, my !vote goes to WikiVoyage, since the word "voyage" lends itself to multilingualism better than "travel." Jmajeremy (talk) 19:11, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
101. Support Will be a great addition to the WMF projects. David1217 (talk) 15:19, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
102. Support, as a non-commercial, global travel guide is highly useful. Hope to see parallel versions in all the languages of other Wikimedia projects. A. Mahoney (talk) 19:24, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
103. Support, and also particularly endorse taking a more generalized "location guide" approach.--Pharos (talk) 20:11, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
104. Support - this will definitely benefit a lot of people who don't know where to go for travel tips. I'm just a tad bit worried about how editors will be neutral enough on travel guides, though. The only thing not to be neutral about are travel advisories, but we'd seriously need some NPOV users. --Jeffwang (talk) 20:40, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
105. Support - as a way to reunite Wikitravel and Wikivoyage under the WMF, in order to create a repository for travel information.Yutsi (talk) 01:14, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
106. Support - For myself, i will be more than happy to contribute to a travel project on WWF and write about place i've visited. I will never do that on web site like WT, for the obvious commercial reason. -- ChristianT (talk) 15:51, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
107. Support This would be great. I am a wikitravel admin and have been contributing since 2004 Elgaard (talk) 20:46, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

1. This isn't as simple as changing the URLs and calling it a day. I don't see it as being possible to do a seamless import, i.e. bring over all of the content, all of the editors, all of the policies, all of the page histories, etc., and leave nothing behind at the old domain. If that's not possible to do, then we're going to end up not doing an import, but a fork. In my opinion, forking a functional project at best creates one mostly functional project and one heavily damaged project, and at worst, creates two heavily damaged projects. Let's not break things that work. All of that being said, if this does go forward, I'd be willing to help coordinate the integration of Wikitravel Shared with Wikimedia Commons. Sven Manguard (talk) 04:15, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

   The reason why this proposal exists is that WT is not functional. Yes we do not want to create two heavily damaged projects. We will hopefully be bringing in WV. Thus we will hopefully be bringing together a broken project, integrating it with a non-broken one and helping them both grow from there.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:25, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

   The fork already happened when Wikivoyage started and Wikitravelists were pissed off by Wikitravel hoster. What we can do here is bring the dissolving community back together in one place. I read the comments from Wikivoyage folks here that way that if we do it right with Wikitravel then they would come and join us, too. So in the end we create a fork with people who want to fork anyway plus we may integrate another, already existing fork. If someone can do this, it is Wikimedia — of course it only works if the WT/WV community really want and support that. But it has been their initiative so far to contact us. So we should give them a warm welcome. --Manuel Schneider^(bla) (+/-) 06:31, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

   By all means, I'd be quite happy if you prove my cynicism on this matter unfounded. Rarely is it unfounded though. Sven Manguard (talk) 17:58, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

   I can vouch that it is near certain that WT admins will fork independently if this proposal falls through, as we were planning to before it became evident that moving to Wikimedia was a possibility. So yes, wikitravel.org will continue to exist without its defectors (and I think virtually all regular contributors will leave if a) this move happens, and b) they are aware of this move). The current hosts will likely lock down editing, chop articles into bits to improve SEO, increase space dedicated to advertising, and generally see the state of things degrade, as it has been even in spite of the effort we, the contributors, continue to put into the site. But, the choice is between welcoming the WT and WV folks to Wikimedia, offering the potential to re-unite those communities, increasing the likelihood that the WT crowd keeps its contributor base intact in the move, and to join them with Wikimedia's own—or seeing the travel wiki communities further fractured and with ever less support. --Peter ^Talk 19:25, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

   @Manguard: When we decided to leave WT years back we wanted to keep the original spirit. We still might be a fork, but in the meantime most content is genuine WV (statistic in german). So we think that migrating our project (as we tried to suggested to WMF back in 2006)is not supporting a fork but integrating at least two communities into WMF projects. Therefore we bring a domain, a community and a large site under the roof of WM. WT de is without any administrator for months now. A lot of language versions just exist because they have been started once but are not living any more. Unfortunately so far none of the en WT community has joined our project before. But this time can be a major step forward to reunite the communities. Technical support on WT has been poor at least. We know that there seem to be old issues of the founding community which are based on our fork. But hurt feelings should not stop the project from beeing started. --Der Reisende (talk) 14:30, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

2.  Oppose - For anyone with a question about the full functionality of Wikitravel, including its software, infrastructure, community and host, my response is simple: go visit. http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page Make some edits. Add content. Come to the world’s largest travel wiki, and see why seven million other travelers will do the same this month, viewing and printing 18 million pages to take on a trip, adding listings of their own and contributing to this unique resource. This community ought not be deprived of some of its finest administrators, editors, curators and writers. The Traveler Comes First.--IBobi (talk) 00:13, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

   (Note: IBobi is one of the employees at Wikitravel) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:04, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

   Clarifying: ibobi is an employee of Internet Brands, rather than an active WT community member – cacahuate ^talk 03:52, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

   (Note: clarifying: ibobi is an employee at Internet Brands and user of Wikitravel)--IBobi (talk) 19:19, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

   I think he made IB's point of view clear to all. Literally censorship is on the way (understandable for a company who might loose the cow that can be milked). --15:02, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

3.  Oppose wikitravel: exists. I see no need to replicate something that already exists within wikis. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:52, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

   All of Wikitravel's most active users see a very real need for just that. Have you spent much time on Wikitravel? LtPowers (talk) 17:30, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

   Then why is that information omitted from the RFC? The RFC is pretty blank about why not enhance one of the existing travel sites, or what is the enhancement over the existing wikis. If the part of the argument is about either the unsustainability or the issues of other ventures, then it would have been helpful to have these raised in the RFC. My opinion/vote is solely based on the existing proposition and my use of the existing site that I quoted, and my perception of the benefits of another travel wiki. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:33, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   We would be rejoining two communities of editors (WV and WT) and the subsequent site would be free of adverting. WV split off because of the commercial issues. I know that I myself would not be here writing for Wikipedia if it was run by a for profit company.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:30, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

4.  Oppose - Don't see the point of a whole new project. Why not set up a travel guide section on Wikibooks, and migrate their content to that instead? Seems like a waste of resources to have 2 wikiprojects with content that could happily fit into one. BarkingFish (talk) 19:06, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

   One could say the same thing about Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Why not set up an encyclopedia section on Wikibooks? LtPowers (talk) 02:21, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   Have you discussed your idea with other wikibooks editors to see how they feel? The German Wikivoyage project is 60% the size of all of German Wikibooks. Travel doesn't obviously fall within the wikibooks notion of 'textbook'. I see that you have worked on 'edge case' projects within Wikibooks: the cookbook and wikijunior. Both are cool, but have at times had their status on the project debated. –SJ talk  20:51, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

5.  Oppose. One point that people don't seem to have brought up is that the WMF, as it stands, has scaling difficulties supporting the projects we do have. This is a natural outcome when you have so many variations on a theme run by such a small org. During his Board of Trustees Q&A at last year's Wikimania, Jimmy made the point that he doesn't think we should add additional projects until we can support the ones we have, and I agree with him. Wikitravel will invariably have individual and independent developer needs that the WMF will be expected to meet, and we can't promise they will be met. Ironholds (talk) 19:16, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

   At their meeting this Wednesday (July 11), the Board will decide whether they are willing to support the project. Opposing this just because you think they might say no seems a bit odd. Jpatokal (talk) 11:22, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   You don't seem to have read my comment; I'm not opposing because they say no. I'm opposing because if they say yes, we have another project to add to the list that cumulatively outstrips our ability to technically support. Most of our developers are focused on the Wikipedia model, which is understandable, because it's our flagship project and is currently in the doldrums, technically speaking. This is great. I think we should be focusing on Wikipedia. But I also appreciate that there are a lot of other projects that are also worthy and will need technical support and customised software, and that we don't have the resources to support all of them. Until we do, adding another one seems silly. Ironholds (talk) 12:09, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   A number of people who are with WT have programing skills so hopefully they will join our volunteer programing team to improve Media Wiki. This new site also has a good possibility to bring in extra funding and thus allow the WMF to increase technical support for all projects.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:30, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

6.  Oppose 1) Per Ironholds, and 2) Doesn't seem like the kind of project the WMF would want anyway... Everything else is verifiable, encyclopedic, news worthy, etc. but Travel stuff could be so opinionated. Further, if this is just supposed to be a database of places and attractions, it may serve better as a WikiProject on ENWP, not its own Wiki. AndrewN (talk) 06:47, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   A Wikitravel travel guide is considerably more than a "database of places and attractions", and even for those places and attractions Wikipedia's goals explicitly rule out core travel information like prices, opening hours, directions for getting there, contact information, etc. Also, the vast majority of the world's hotels, restaurants, nightclubs etc do not meet WP's notability requirements. Jpatokal (talk) 11:22, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   I invite you to glance over these examples; The Star Articles, our Destinations of the Month, or the Off the beaten path places, for a taste of the aspirations. It is not just a database of places, many sites do that, probably better than Wikitravel too, its writing true travel guides anyone can edit that is the unique part of wikitravel. Sertmann (talk) 18:06, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

7.  Oppose Unfortunately. A travel site would fit nicely in the WMF remit. However this travel site is not a good fit for our culture; there is resistance to basic things like removal of advertising (I suggested to a secondary reviews portal on the mailing list, where it would be more utile, but to no avail), increased use of (or encouragement of) source material. WikiTravel, in these circumstances, would not be a useful free resource. In addition I have read the talk page discussions related to this proposal; I am concerned that the WT people are interested in the WMF for its technical support (which is fine) but are unwilling to adopt some of the basic tenets of the movement - particularly worrying was the discussion over "BLP" which is such a core facet of our movement, but which they seem to have no understanding of in context, nor how it would apply to WT. There seems no established mechanism for investigating copyright violations. The WT admins who are pioneering this movement have made claims that most of the users will move to this new project; but have not substantiated this with any explanation. Details on how many active users there are, how aware they would be of this change, etc. would be critical for my support. Looking over the recent changes; a lot of contributions seem to be spam or advertising - and there is no apparent strategy to combat this in the future; a critical tenet of the movement is that there is no advertising. --ErrantX (talk) 08:49, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   The horrendous spam and advertising is a result of the poor technical support of the current host, Internet Brands. For awhile, there was no CAPTCHA mechanism when signing up for an account; the block tool didn't even work for a few days! A WMF-run site would allow the introduction of bots to prevent obvious spamming, along with a multitude of other basic ideas that IB never bothered with. Plus, there would also be an influx of returning admins (who've voiced their support and interest) to the WMF-run site to help with maintenance and vandalism-removal. JamesA (talk) 11:11, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   I presume that by "advertising" you mean spam? The Don't tout core policy addresses this head on. The present problem with spam being entered faster than it can be reliably removed is partly because Wikitravel's present owners have managed to drive away most of the active users who used to do the janitorial work, but mostly because they have been extremely slow in implementing any of the countless technical anti-spam measures pioneered by Wikipedia. Shifting to the WMF and simply applying the same filters, bots etc that are used for other WMF wikis would drastically cut down on the problem.

   Also, BLP has not been much of an issue on Wikitravel to date, simply because individual living people are virtually never covered by its articles. But as already stated in the discussion, Wikitravel admins have no objections to applying the policy to the Wikimedia fork. Jpatokal (talk) 11:20, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

8. We have enough neglected, inactive projects. Let's focus on what already needs to get done. Our limited resources, in my opinion, could be directed toward more worthwhile endeavors. Blurpeace 17:36, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   As all of the Wikitravel and Wikivoyage admins would be signing up to the new project, the resources would come right along with them. One of the exciting things I see happening is the rejoining of those two communities, and the return of former invaluable contributors who have been driven off by advertising, poor tech support, and other concerns about hosting and data integrity. They (er..., we) also would become much more involved in helping out with the other WMF projects, especially Commons, which is what I was getting at in mentioning synergies above. Expectations for what tech support looks like are not high, only because the bar has been set so low in the past, and we'd be thrilled just to have the permissions so that skilled members of our community could work on feature development. --Peter ^Talk 21:59, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   There is increased efficiency in volume which is why we see corporations involved in similar businesses merging. A travel guide would hopefully improve our revenue and thus result in better technical support for all projects.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:12, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

9. Wikimedia struggles to maintain most non-Wikipedia sites, such as Wikinews, Wikisource, et al. I cannot see how WMF will manage to make this last much longer than a couple years before the entire structure of a travel wiki fails. Frood (talk) 23:37, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   I guess I have more faith in the abilities of the WMF than you :-) I think these non Wikipedia sites are having trouble maintaining their communities of editors rather than their infrastructure. And it is the community of editors that makes a site succeed or fail. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:24, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

   So, by that logic, if somebody were to build a store, and provide basic utilities, customers would go to the store and put their items on a shelf. WMF needs to try to get editors, not just provide the bare necessities of technical stuff. Frood (talk) 01:42, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

   The Wikimedia movement is the one who needs to get the editors. While the WMF may be able to help with this I do not see it as their primary purpose. The WMF is to keep the lights on. Getting editors is exactly what this proposal is going to accomplish. What we have here is at least another 50 dedicated contributors who wish to join the WM movement. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:52, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

   If a WMF travel site languishes in the future then by all means a discussion should take place about whether it should be transitioned to another hosting provider (after all, the content is open source). However, your opposition (and that of several others here) seems to pre-suppose failure, and given that the project has already survived for nearly a decade it seems that the existing evidence is that it stands an excellent chance of being successful. -- Wrh2 (talk) 03:40, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

10. Mild oppose.  The Travel Guide strikes me as a great project that's beyond the immediate scope of the WMF; I also have concerns about NPOV and resource allocation.   GChriss (talk) 16:55, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

    Additional explanation here. Sincerely, GChriss (talk) 02:02, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose - Against further Wikimedia scope creep and empire building. Wikimedia runs on donations, it's lean enough as it is, and I'm not convinced that the proposed travel vertical would bring in any significant new audience, engagement or revenue for other Wikimedia projects. The argument for would be more convincing if Wikitravel/WikiVoyage came from a position of strength. They don't. The WMF is not in the business of catching falling knives. People donated to keep Wikipedia free, not to bail out/subsidise travel guides.

And it's not one wiki fits all, you can't just throw WMF/mediawiki at it and expect it to be a success - just look at wikinews. Travel is so clearly not served by mediawiki software, to get travel right requires mapping, recommendations, localised listings, booking/payment systems. Mediawiki software is so deficient in this regard, and it always will be if its main concern (which it will be) is Wikipedia.

There's an argument about commercialisation above, but that's just totally irrelevant. I really couldn't care less that editors would be put off editing a travel guide if it were run by a for-profit enterprise, no one should. Wikia has clearly shown that there are legions of editors out there who would, and it continues to innovate (such as the editing interface) without having to deal with the red tape consensus that plagues WMF projects. Wikipedia doesn't even allow users to sign in with Facebook (due to NPOV/advertising issues I assume) regardless of its benefits, yet Wikia does.

In conclusion, Mediawiki will not serve the travel vertical well, and so the audience will remain negligible. A travel project would be better served by a for-profit company which is free to innovate and deliver the features that vertical needs. If the Wikitravel guys had any sense, they'd be cap in hand on Sand Hill Road, not at the WMF's doorstep. And if they can't do it, Wikia should. - hahnchen (talk) 03:05, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikitravel is owned and operated by a for-profit company, which has focused for the past 5 years on maximizing ad revenue at the expense of everything else, and the whole reason for the fork is that it's quite demonstrably not working out at all. As for "negligible audience", Google's estimates for Wikitravel traffic in May 2012 are as follows:

Unique visitors (estimated cookies): 4.6M

Unique visitors (users): 2M

Page views 8.3M

By most measures this is larger than all existing WM projects except Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikibooks, plus there's an untold number of websites that mirror or remix Wikitravel content (Triposo, Offbeat Guides, you.travel, etc etc). Jpatokal (talk) 06:42, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikitravel was acquired by Internet Brands 5 years ago; advertisements were not even placed on the site for 3 years after that, and have not changed since. Meanwhile over the past year-plus, feature requests have been completed, and an enormous software, hardware, and database upgrade has just finished, resulting in a Wikitravel that is the best it has ever been, by a significant margin. There's daily engagement between the WT administrators and IB technical and community support teams. It's unfortunate that the timing of this upgrade coincided with the WMF fork proposal, which was first made two months after the upgrade began; this has resulted in a number of "support" votes that are based on outdated information about the site's technical capabilities. It's simply a different situation now, and presumably the WMF board will take this into consideration. Thank you.--IBobi talk email 18:49, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

The advertisements have changed since their introduction. I took the lead personally in pushing for a durable consensus to introduce Google text ads, as we hoped that ad revenue might lead to an interest on the part of IB to take tech support and feature development seriously. That engagement did not happen, and IB unilaterally, overnight, without any advance notice or discussion introduced image ads, which remain in violation of our advertising policy. IB maintains plans to introduce further commercialization over community objection. Even the ads that the community have approved have turned away would-be contributors uncomfortable with the for-profit status of Wikitravel's host.

The clash of a closed, secretive, corporate culture with our open, pro bono publico culture has been nearly as big a problem as neglect and restricted access. This is why we think the WMF is a much better fit, as we share the same ethos as the various Wikimedia projects—indeed, our project was inspired by them and directly modeled after them. --Peter ^Talk 19:56, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Comments

older comments archived to talk

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NPOV

The NPOV (neutral point of view) issue has been brought up above. I think we should stick to the fair rule which exists in the communities of the existing Travel Guide Wikis which means, the proper information required should be given without to much personal judgement (rather like noisy place with slow service than worst place I have ever seen). --Der Reisende (talk) 13:44, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not even an issue. NPOV is a policy of several Wikimedia wikis, including English Wikipedia, but no one imposed it from without. Several Wikimedia projects operate without an NPOV policy, in particular the various Wikiversities. I wish Ikan hadn't brought it up, because no one (and I mean no one) has even so much as suggested that the travel guide would be forced to accept a NPOV policy. Frankly, I don't even know where the idea came from. LtPowers (talk) 14:14, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to offend. I brought it up because I was a bit confused by the import of Tom Morris' remarks above. As I participate on both Wikipedia and Wikitravel, I wanted to know whether the forked Wikitravel-by-another-name would have an NPOV policy. Since it sounds like that won't be an issue, and the "be fair" policy can remain, I withdraw any reservation on the fork. Wikipedia is a much better functioning site with a much larger user base. For all the reasons everyone participating in this discussion has stated, the fork is a good idea. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:30, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

See also Commons:Commons:NPOV. I don't see why NPOV would be an issue. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:30, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

This has already been discussed at Talk:Travel Guide, and I'm pretty sure the idea of trying to impose NPOV or other policy changes upon the fledgling project—which is indeed a fork of an existing and experienced travel wiki—would be inappropriate and will not happen.

I do think it is a bit unfortunate that the rfc has been separated from that talk page, since the discussions should be right in the forefront of voters minds, but I understand why it was done. --Peter ^Talk 16:57, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it would be inappropriate; and indeed a lack of improvement to the content prior to importing would be a deal breaker to me. "Be Fair" is, really, NPOV as I read it, so that is fine. What is problematic is people reviewing things like e.g. restaurants - larger review sites already have problems with people submitting fake reviews - without a secondary source the site will be filled with unsolicited opinion. This is not something I would want from a travel site. I'd like to see either a ban on "review" style material, or a requirement for reviews to be based on sources (i.e. another guide). There is also a major problem on WT with advertising - of the form of "go to the this restaurant" etc. That needs to be removed. --ErrantX (talk) 08:18, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

We try our best to remove review-type material as well as advertising when we see it. Part of the goal of opening a Wikimedia-related Wiki is to get more eyeballs on the project who can remove inappropriate material. If, however, you're asking for us to adopt either dry, uninflected encyclopedia-style writing, or a policy that says we can't say anything that might appear biased without rigorous sourcing, I can tell you it's not going to happen. For the former, who wants to read a travel guide written like an encyclopedia? For the latter, why would anyone use our travel guide if we're just copying content from other guides? LtPowers (talk) 14:01, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, who would want to write an encyclopaedia like that either; it's a strange misconception that "Neutral" equates to "Boring". One of the key things English Wikipedia does is stress that controversial views should be cited; to take an example the Paris WT article notes that Parisians have a reputation for being brusque, and then blames it in part on you the tourist. I think it would be important for a WT within the WMF infrastructure to adopt a little more referencing (that section is fairly easy to add a few sources for). Perhaps a compromise could be to not require removal of "unsourced" things; it would at least allow a reader like myself to put more trust in the material. Bringing it under the WMF umbrella will lend a substantial guarantee to the material, and I think we need to uphold that somewhat. why would anyone use our travel guide if we're just copying content from other guides; same argument could be stated as "who would want to read Wikipedia if it just records other sources". The key aspect being that you're collating the information and providing a portal to further information. I guess this hits on the crux of the issue; are you writing a totally original travel guide - or are you combining travel writing with useful source/support material & further reading. The former I do not think is a good fit for WMF, the latter more so. We try our best to remove review-type material as well as advertising when we see it; This seems sanctioned?? --ErrantX (talk) 15:21, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

The idea that a travel guide should eschew review-type content or recommendations is just silly. If anything, crowdsourcing this type of information seems to be superior to going with the judgment of one or two overworked and underpaid travel writers, as is the case with nearly all other travel guides. Referencing online reviews is something rarely done on Wikitravel, and really only done on talk pages to justify not including a business that has an extensive set of negative reviews, in case of a dispute. Dealing with the types of problems you identify is something we have been working on since the infant years of the free travel guide project, something that is always improving, something for which we could develop better tools following this move. In any rate, this has been discussed extensively on Wikitravel throughout the past 8 years, and to a fair degree at Talk:Travel Guide (along with pointers to relevant policies and discussions on Wikitravel), but if you read the history of those discussions and still think imposing such a condition on the proposed project necessary, you should add yourself to the oppose list. --Peter ^Talk 21:19, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

That's sad to hear :( --ErrantX (talk) 08:44, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know where you get the idea that the content you pointed to in wikitravel:Verona is "sanctioned", but I've just now changed it to better meet Wikitravel's guidelines. Like Wikipedia, the guide is a work in progress. It's the travel guide anyone can edit, and so you could have helped by removing that offending content yourself. Our goal is to be the only guide a traveler needs; there are plenty of other sites on the web that can point travelers to external travel information, so if that's all we were going to do, there'd be no point. What you haven't explained is why you think it's important for a WMF travel guide project to adhere to Wikipedia-like rules on point of view and verifiability. Do you also object to Wikinews' original reporting? To Commons' original illustrations? LtPowers (talk) 23:03, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

It's still stuffed with advertising; the listing is a) not even a slightly comprehensive, b) still stuffed full of advertising by the looks of things. And the whole set up of that portion of the page ("Add listing") is centred around advertising restaurants etc. What you haven't explained is why you think it's important for a WMF travel guide project to adhere to Wikipedia-like rules on point of view and verifiability. Do you also object to Wikinews' original reporting? To Commons' original illustrations?; this isn't at all what I have said. I am suggesting you need more focus on factual detail than classified listings, and that encouraging source material is important to make the resource utile. I use WikiTravel myself, but only for a quick overview - it's not particularly useful for further reading or a deep understanding of a location. --ErrantX (talk) 08:44, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

To put it another way; your listings are (often) the review of a single person. And contain a small subset of the local (for example) hotels, many of which my no longer be operating. Compare that to something like TripAdvisor... I'd consider it much better to link out to several sites like TripAdvisor - where a reader can get actually useful detail rather than adverts. --ErrantX (talk) 08:48, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Really? You may have missed this little flap. But long story short, linking to external sources has been discussed ad nauseam on Wikitravel and rejected every time, please see the External links policy and its Talk pages for a (not-so-)quick primer why. Jpatokal (talk) 11:32, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

As with WT, TA is flawed. But with the right cynicism it is a very useful resource, and for recommendations light years ahead of WT. --ErrantX (talk) 13:38, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, "comprehensiveness" is explicitly not a goal, the target is 7 +/- 2 good places per category, with negative reviews generally discouraged. Wikitravel's model relies on users policing each other and any disputes getting hashed out on Talk pages -- much like any other wiki, in other words. Jpatokal (talk) 11:32, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Which, as a heavy traveller, makes it entirely useless - and also encourages advertising. The existence of that spam fest is a deal breaker to me, and I suspect the WMF board will have deep concerns about it too. By my observation (as a user/reader) you do a bad job with the policing; most of the listings look like spam in my experience. You've failed to consider the problem with pushing for positive reviews plus little oversight on material. one of the good things about review-listing formats like Trip Advisor is that contrary views (as Tom Morris discusses above) can be put into whatever context. By presenting it in the guide, without substantiation, as prose, you have basically maximised the attack target for spam - which is why WT is full of spam. But overall, the resistance to any sort of changes or improvements (understandable though it is) is what puts me most off about this merger. --ErrantX (talk) 13:38, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I do not think that there is resistance to changes. Change is just to occur in the same way as on other WMF sites which is via consensus.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:52, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

You're mistaking disagreement for reticence. It's not that we don't like change, it's that we don't consider your proposed changes improvements. (Though actually, I'm still not sure exactly what you're proposing.) We know we have a problem with spam, but so does Wikipedia. What Wikipedia has that we don't is a large contributor base that can spot the spam quickly and create automated tools to handle the most egregious violations quickly. You seem to be under the impression that we welcome touts and spammers, and that's simply not the case. LtPowers (talk) 20:25, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I would go a little beyond what LtPowers has said—it's not even that "we don't consider your proposed changes improvements." It's that this RFC—regarding whether a travel guide is an appropriate project for WMF to host, whether it would be a successful project, and whether populating it with the communities and content of Wikitravel and Wikivoyage makes sense—is not the appropriate venue for proposing changes to how those communities work. If you want to address problems you see in, for example, Wikitravel:Don't tout, Wikitravel:External links, or even Wikitravel:Goals and non-goals, you are more than welcome to do so at any time on the respective talk pages.

I wanted to address one other thing you wrote, "I use WikiTravel myself, but only for a quick overview - it's not particularly useful for further reading or a deep understanding of a location." Of course, it's a travel guide! For further reading or deep understanding of a location, we actually have always linked (from the sidebar) and recommended Wikipedia ;) --Peter ^Talk 21:52, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

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Agree with Peter I see a travel guide ideally as a resource to help me travel through and experience a location. If I want an in depth history or analysis I would go to Wikipedia but if I want to know that the gates of the Serengeti close at 6 pm sharp or that many of the guards are going to make up rules and request bribes once you are at said gate thus one needs to be mentally prepared than a travel guide is what I want and not all of it can or should be referenced.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:23, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I find ErrantX's comments useful, though Peter is right that proposing community fixes is a bit tangential to the RfC. Some of the proposed changes (effective ways to link out to sources of comprehensive local places and reviews; ways to aggregate reviews directly; ways to separate positive and negative presentations of a pace from descriptions) would be useful aspects of a travel-guide style guide. Some could fuel important philosophical and practical debates if a travel guide project were to get underway. –SJ talk  05:12, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Peter; you might have missed what I meant for a deep understanding.. Wikipedia would be even worse! To cast it in a WP example; if I wanted to find out about a topic I would visit the Wikipedia article for an overview; I would then use the extensive references to dive deeper into the topic, beyond the summary. I'd like to do this with WikiTravel too - including being linked to reliably published reviews beyond the summary - but at the moment that is not provided. I disagree this is the wrong venue for proposing "fixes"; it is my feeling that what I am highlighting (rules & templates that endorse/encourage advertising, aversion to any form of sourcing, etc.) are fundamental to inclusion in our movement. My concern is that the outright rejection of them at this stage indicates that afterward they would stand no better chance of being adopted.

@LTPowers; in all of these discussions the problems have been blamed, by yourself and others, on either the current host of WT or the lack of an established community, but my observation (from digging into WT) is that problems also stem from the current policies and approaches - problems we have to some extent fixed on Wikipedia and other WMF wiki's (n.b. it's worth pointing out I don't consider my home, English Wikipedia, to have a clean house, and I do regularly criticise our policies as harshly - so I am not being hypocritical). On a wider point; one of your aims in joining WMF seems to be to attract a larger community. If this is a key aim I would urge you to take caution; many of the WMF's other projects, besides Wikipedia, struggle to retain a community. Often the seed users continue to form the bulk of the community (n.b. my research into this is currently still very "green"). So it is unlikely you will see a sudden influx of either community members or developer time as a result of joining the WM community - if fixing your problems is predicated on this, then take care.

Someone asked me for firm comments about what I want to see; that's fair. So here is what I would consider the minimum required for me to support WT's acceptance:

• Revision of the policies precluding sourcing; so that they encourage people to add and use sources, whilst still retaining the style and approach of a travel guide.

• Reasoning: This improves the utility to readers by providing further reading and supporting opinion in a way which the reader will find more authoritative

• Removal of "listings"; instead replacing this with a reviews namespace, and in return I would lobby the WMF hard to provide a "reviews portal" extension to help provide a proper review system.

• Reasoning: by my observation a very high majority of listings are "spam-like", this is not utile to the reader

As with other WMF projects, my main focus is on improving the resource for the reader --ErrantX (talk) 13:15, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

These suggestions would not improved the guide for this reader. If I want to read published reviews of hotels (or whatever) I'll just use Google or read other guides; part of the value of a travel wiki is its "original research". A user-submitted review on a competing commercial site is no more "authoritative" and to suggest that it would be devalues the contributions of the wiki's own editors. Furthermore, the use of external links would encourage spamming from those other guides, hoping to get readers of the wiki to read their (ad-encrusted) web site. -98.209.136.52 15:24, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

If anything this highlights a lot of confusion over what I am suggesting; linking to other reviews would be non-optimal. I am calling for sourcing to reliably published sources, to support material (such as the example I noted above about the attitude of Parisians, upon which much is written). This is good because it lends weight to the material; it shows that it is not something that a random WT contributor has judged, but that it is a judgement agreed upon widely. Whereas if he went on to say "Parisians are pretty grouchy to each other too, so don't take it to heart", this is embellishment, original research - and I wouldn't call for its removal. But at least readers are aware that it is the view of the writer. --ErrantX (talk) 09:19, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

As outlined in discussions on the topic on Wikitravel I agree that references aren't the best way to improve the travel guide, but there have been ongoing discussions (see [1] for example) on how to take advantage of the wiki model to improve listing reliability. Many of these types of discussions have stalled due to technical limitations and other issues related to current hosting, but hopefully they would re-start with a change in hosts and the ability to consider additional technical options. -- Wrh2 (talk) 16:41, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Keep in mind, ErrantX, that our goal, as a project, is not to replace or replicate sites like TripAdvisor; it's to compete with published hard-copy travel guides like you'd find on a bookstore's shelves. Much like Wikipedia aims to replicate the encyclopedia experience in a collaboratively edited form, so we wish to replicate the travel-book experience. As such, many of our standards and practices have been formulated to parallel what travel book publishers do. Unlike Wikipedia, we want and expect readers to print out our guides and take them with them while traveling; in some parts of the world, Internet access can be spotty or non-existent, and having a printout in your back pocket telling you that there's a clean hostel in the next town can be invaluable. A link to TripAdvisor? Useless. LtPowers (talk) 20:51, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

To be honest; most listings are not utile for that purpose. They largely constitute spam (i.e. the Verona example I cited). I appreciate the need to create a printable guide - but I think that a half-assed attempt at listings is actually *worse* than a link to TripAdvisor. At least in the latter case I can:

• Read multiple reviews to be able to apply filters to the material
• Print out a much more comprehensive listing along with a map

The point being; your argument only works if the only thing someone can print is a WikiTravel guide. In practice this is not the case. The overriding ethos of the WM movement is encouraging access to knowledge; restrictions on linking on the principle that you want WT to say it all is counter to that ethos. The crux of my disagreement, though, is that you are not doing listings well (neither do travel books; but they are restricted by the printing, and at least you know it is not spam). Whereas other sites do do listings quite well. You can't compete in the current form so don't impact the reader by leading them away from better resources. --ErrantX (talk) 09:19, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

So you can't print Wikitravel guides? Your insights continue to astound me -- and this will become even easier if WT joins WMF and thus gets easy access to PediaPress's Collections extension for creating and printing books.

Also, as you should know, Wikipedia all but bans external links in the body of its articles. Does this run counter to the "overriding ethos of the WM movement", and why didn't Jimmy Wales just put up a whole bunch of links to the Encyclopedia Britannica back when Wikipedia consisted of a few "half-assed" pages? After all, that would have served the reader better, no? Jpatokal (talk) 11:54, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Linking to primary sources such as the websites of parks or the national embassies of countries is already encouraged. Section on history IMO should also be referenced. I think that all that is being asked is that the discussion of new policies and procedures takes place through the appropriate channels and after proper discussion. The issue of external links/references is a difficult one as well some are useful others are simply spam and it can be difficult to determine the difference between the two sometimes. We struggle we people adding references that are little more than spam to Wikipedia all the time. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I am against the idea of sweeping concerns under the carpet till after adoption - fixing matters after the fact is not optimal. Some confusion may exist, for me, then over exactly what outcome this proposal will be. The text of the proposal page implies we plan to start a new Travel Guide project, importing content from WT & WV. But the apparent view from WT admins is that the whole of WT's ecosystem, policies and procedures will be uprooted and moved to WMF hosting. From the discussions below it appears there are as many people who would be happy to involve themselves in a Travel Guide under the WMF umbrella. My concern is that many of the current WT policies are contrary to the WMF ethos; and I am suggesting that this is the prime opportunity for current WT & WVF members, interested WMF members and others who wish to contribute to a travel guide, to address these matters and produce a cohesive proposal to the board. --ErrantX (talk) 09:19, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

(conflict) In a word, no. The essence of the proposal is indeed to move Wikitravel wholesale over the WMF, with the minimum of necessary adjustments as required by the WMF community: things like making BLP explicit policy, for example. There's plenty of consensus-building and admin/dev grunt work required just to make that happen, and this is thus not the time to start flinging out poorly thought out suggestions for completely altering the way the site works, like your idea of "removing listings", which is kind of like saying you'd support Wikipedia if only they got rid of those pesky articles. Of course Wikitravel is a work in progress and there's always room for radical ideas about how things could be different (there's one discussion going on the Pub right now, for instance), and I actually fully support the basic idea of allowing users to enter multiple reviews per point of interest (IIRC this was first proposed around 2005 when the present listings formatter was implemented), but we've got to get the foundation of the new site set up first before we can seriously start thinking about making massive changes. Jpatokal (talk) 12:19, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

What a ridiculous analogy; I'd liken it to saying I'd support Wikipedia without classified listings on, say, product pages. Now is the opportunity to bring radical change - the Wiki model doesn't support such change well, and to bring WT in line with WMF ethos would take significantly more time after the fact. I'm sorry you consider my proposals "poorly thought out". I've devoted a number of hours familiarising myself with WT's internals before proposing these solutions, and given careful thought from the perspective of a user of the site as to how I would like to see it improved. I won't be equally offensive about the rebuttals so far given, because I can see they are raised with the same passion I have brought - but perhaps you could have the courtesy to stay civil. --ErrantX (talk) 19:52, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Within a travel resource some links/references are wanted and some are not. The key is to find the right balance. Yes there is a great deal of stuff that could and should be reference like the attitude of Parisians or New Yorkers, entry fees and time tables. But there are many things that should/does not require referencing like if bribes are needed when traveling through an area.

I spend some of time on Wikipedia removing links per that fact that we are neither a collection of external nor internal links. We discourage "see also" sections at WP:MEDMOS. We also require a certain quality of reference and state that we do not need to reference the obvious. Thus Wikipedia has a similar ethos regarding refs/external links to that of WT. Here is an essay on citation overkill [2] which indicates that even we are undecided what is right. Thus the Wikipedia ethos is "use common sense". I think the ethos of WT and WP are more similar than you give credit. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:11, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I find them very similar, and to me the biggest difference is that original research is encouraged on WT but forbidden on WP. Both policies are quite appropriate. My work on Wikitravel would be impossible on Wikipedia because it is almost entirely original research (Dive site guides for Cape Town). There are no printed equivalents to what I do, so ir wouldn't be possible to provide citations. I could hypothetically publish a book, but it would be a financial disaster for me, and it would always be out of date. With Wikitravel I can provide a service of value not only to the traveller but to the local marine scientists. However, I would like to see more references, particularly inline references, in Wikitravel, where they are appropriate, and would support a move in that direction, but it should not be a deal-breaker either way. Besides those two differences the similarities in policy are overwhelming. On the other hand, Wikitravel is generally a friendlier and more laid back environment to work in, possibly because the users are more united in their purpose. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:52, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Really, I recommend reading Wikitravel:Wikitravel talk:Don't tout not because I'm lazy, but because the problems that ErrantX notices and proposed potential solutions have been discussed extensively on that page. I think it would be great if he would read those discussions and join them. Go beyond that: try writing a bit on a place you know, try using a guide when traveling, read some of the star articles.

Simply getting rid of listings because they are "reviews" and "NPOV" is not a good idea for a travel guide, and if you browse through any travel guide in any bookstore, you will notice that the bulk of the book is made up of listings. The idea that "reviews" can simply be outsourced to other sites for travelers is one that only someone who has not traveled much outside the developed world would have. Having come back from Wikipedia:Kara, Togo this past December, I, as a dedicated travel writer who writes on the internet for free for the benefit of humankind, can recommend places to sleep, eat, drink, wire money, use the internet, etc. Believe it or not, Yelp's Kara reviews are less extensive than in Chicago. And even if there was information on the city in online review sites, trying to load Tripadvisor in the internet cafe would likely take an hour, crash the browser after loading, and not be printable in the least (your iPhone won't get great service either). This process would be further confounded when the power goes out right as you hit the print button.

Travel is a radically different type of education that reading an encyclopedia, a textbook, journal articles, or the news—it is about experiencing the world first-hand. A travel guide is not meant to be the final word in such education or even the middle word, it is meant to enable and enrich travel. This is why the traveller comes first. --Peter ^Talk 15:26, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, one more thing I wanted to address is the idea that Wikitravel constitutes a bad community to draw on for a WMF travel guide wiki. (I'm trying not to take this too personally ;) ) It is a clear strength, and a clear pointer towards near-guaranteed success, that this proposal comes along with not just the content of Wikitravel and Wikivoyage, it comes along with communities that have developed over 10 years. Communities filled with experienced, smart people, who have been in the process of refining policies governing how such a site would ideally be run for 10 years, based on the experience of writing travel guides, using said travel guides while traveling, and the discussions resulting. (We have been stymied in implementing many of our ideas from the lack of any feature development whatsoever for the past 5 of those years.) This is an enormously important strength of this proposal, and the notion that we should change core aspects of the project based on snap judgments of people just checking out the project is wrongheaded. --Peter ^Talk 15:55, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

@Peter (Southwood); I think you and I are on much the same page, and I agree that going forward that is the best approach. My hangup is the outright resistance to any form of source material, which I find inexplicable. @Peterfitzgerald; A few quick points. I recommend not coming to this expecting WMF developer time - support of this sort for projects besides WP is traditionally low. A natural product of it being the largest kid on the block. Some of the projects have been waiting for years to see their additional tool requests be actioned. So you should consider sourcing your own community developers to bring to the foundation, that is traditionally a better approach. I read the don't tout guide in-depth, and the talk page discussions. It doesn't allay my concerns. Indeed it seems to suggest business owners are fine to add listings for their establishment, so long as they don't "tout". You might want to talk to Jimbo Wales about that because he is dead set against such policies, and although I don't agree with how far he goes with that view, I agree in this case. To be clear; the don't tout policy seems to ignore the fact that a lot of listings look suspiciously like advertising that either is written well enough to pass muster or has been de-weaseled by another editor. I am sure you can see how this is undermines it as a recommendation. As an avid traveller myself, I share a lot of the ideals of the WT community, and I approve of a lot of the content and approach you take - but that is also tempered by my desire to inform and spread knowledge as accurately as possible. We can enrich the experience of travelling, and at the same time ensure that the information imparted is as accurate as possible. I'd also like us to solve the listings problem; but I don't think the current setup is an improvement. --ErrantX (talk) 19:52, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

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Actually, in more recent years, as the site has matured and we don't lack for listings, there is increasing support for an outright policy of not adding one's own business. Many still consider that a little too extreme, but we have been headed in that direction. Even were we to have such a policy, though, we would still remain flexible. For a good example, look at this edit to our article on Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood (check out that article's see section too—it's a personal pride of mine). That edit was a total mess and the sort of blatant advertising we do not allow as a matter of policy and practice, and it was immediately reverted by a recentchanges patroller. But, I hadn't heard about the place, thought it sounded interesting, checked it out online from different angles, stopped by in person to take a look and chat with the owner, and restored it as a really cool listing.

I finally found the discussions that I had lost at Wikitravel:Wikitravel talk:Business listings reliability Expedition (an expedition specifically brought up to discuss the quality of our listings, and how to counter the detrimental effect that would-be advertisers have on said quality). I think you might read the most recent thread at the bottom of that page with some interest. Lack of feature development has stymied that type of initiative; in a sad sort of comedy, we were thinking about doing just that sort of thing before IB bought the site six years ago... --Peter ^Talk 20:54, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Numbers

To better facilitate my (and others) views on this idea can we get some firmer numbers about the community sizes & how such a transition would occur. I see that 31 WT admins support the move, and I assume that the Wikivoyage proposal involves the whole community "moving".

• How large & active is the Wikivoyage community? They seem only lightly active from a review of RecentChanges, but further details will be useful.
• How large is the WT community beyond the admin corps? A question on the talk page indicates absolute figures at 72,617 registered users; obviously this does not represent regulars. My understanding is that a lot of WT is written in drive-by mode (i.e. one or two additions following a trip) but:
  • Are there many regular members beyond the admin corps? (this was unclear from my browsing of the WT project pages etc.)
  • Has this group been asked, or expressed any interest, in moving to the WMF umbrella?
  • How will they be reached in the case of acceptance? (obviously; there is no point to adopting the site if only 31 people come along :))
  • If I am right, and many additions are made by single-purpose editors (i.e. who come to write about, say, a single city). If the project were adopted it, obviously, would suffer from lacking Google juice (so that potential editors would be still more likely to find the old WT). How do the WT community intend to overcome this problem and retain the current level of edits/additions to the wiki?

What I am trying to do is gauge the size of a Travel Guide community that would be seeding this project. Other Wikimedia projects struggle to retain communities and it's important that the seed community is strong. Reviews of RecentChanges on WT and WV projects indicate that participation is extremely low (on a par to the most desperately declining WMF projects) Thanks in advance! --ErrantX (talk) 13:35, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Our active contributor base has declined over the years at Wikitravel (including among the admins who support this proposal, and are willing to come back to work on the new project), and one of our biggest hopes is that getting rid of ever-increasing commercialization, and the ability to work ourselves on feature development, will help also bring back old non-admin regulars. The reasons why you see mainly administrators from WT here is simple enough: we have a private admin email list, while discussion of the fork on Wikitravel is either considered distasteful among our community or simply subject to censorship from Internet Brands. So the message is not out as far and wide as would be ideal, but I think it will be easier to spread the word once we actually have confirmation that this project is going forward. To try and put a number on currently active regulars aside from admins, I'd say about a paltry 15-20 or so on the English version, which is an all time low. To give an idea of the ratios involved regarding active/potential returning contributors, we have about 5-7 active admins on /en, but have over 30 interested in rejoining the project if we move—over a 5-fold increase.

All regulars beyond the admins who are aware of this project have expressed support and a desire to move.

We believe that a sitenotice on WT would be the most straightforward way of alerting casual contributors, but that IB would likely censor it as soon as they noticed it, and possibly disable MW message editing. Other ways include personal emails, blog posts & news articles (several of our regulars are experienced in dealing with media contacts, and this compelling narrative really writes itself!), the simple exposure that comes from being a WMF-hosted site, and the passage of time!

Certain language versions on Wikitravel are in trouble (happily, two of those are /de and /it, which would be replaced by the vibrant communities at Wikivoyage).

Googular juice will be decent, once the interwiki map is updated to point at the WMF site. I think over time the new project would attract significantly higher traffic from searches than a stagnant WT.

I think you underestimate even the current state of things on WT, though, as it is one of the most successful non-WMF wiki projects in terms of readership, contributions, content (an enormous volume of really good content, some phenomenal content that exceeds the quality of any other travel guide written for said destinations, in addition to some less-good content). Our admins are not just janitors (although they are that), they also are active writers—take a look at the Wikitravel:Baltimore#Districts articles that I've been working on just this year, for example. If we had a full 30 of us involved, the project would be a good 5 times healthier by that metric, if impoverished relatively in terms of anon contributions immediately following a move. Another big advantage, though, is that with new tools, returning contributors, and newly re-energized contributors (I'm one of those), we would have much improved ability to patrol those casual contributions to make sure that a) they were not contributed by an advertiser, and b) were properly formatted, educated on policy, etc.

Obviously, /en is not the sole focus, as we intend to be a project in your own language. Some of the current projects have not gotten off the ground, like /he, /ko, or /eo. Those we should shut down until we have dedicated contributors ready to curate them. Others, like /ja or /ru are curated excellently, by a small group of highly talented contributors.

To sum up, Wikitravel and Wikivoyage are successful projects—certainly not failing now, and we have unanimity among all current regular contributors (those who are aware of this project, at least) that they will be more vibrant and successful under the wing of the WMF. --Peter ^Talk 19:26, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I forgot to address your contention that this is an appropriate place to propose policy changes. To try and change policies here would be seen as an attempt to leverage rfc voting to circumvent the long-standing practice and policy of community consensus among both of our communities. It also can come across as a little hasty in terms of judgment, given just how much serious thought has been devoted to these types of issues by some rather smart folks, and I would encourage you instead to read the talk pages of, say, Wikitravel:Wikitravel talk:External links, and then propose changes there, if you are not convinced after learning the history of current policy that it makes sense ;) --Peter ^Talk 19:26, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

As mentioned previously I have never really contributed to WT as I do not like the fact that it is owned by a commercial entity. I am sure there are many out their like myself. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:02, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I have the same attitude--Ymblanter (talk) 18:37, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I use to contribute a lot to WikiTravel, and I know its community is big enough to be sustainable, bigger than Wikinews or Wikisource. I more-or-less stopped contributing, because its freedom is threaten, but if the project became a WM project, I would resume editing, even more than I used to do. I am sure many WT editors feel like me. Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:20, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

WV numbers can be found here although in German. We are just an handful of admins, all willing to join including the board of the NGO as stated before. Roughly 1500 users plus a lot who has addressed us who are disappointed by WT. Almost 12.000 articles in German, 2400 in Italian and 29.000 files on shared which are mainly images. Additionally the know how of a location database and a postgres run wiki. --Der Reisende (talk) 16:26, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Location guide?

GChriss pointed out that 'travel' indicates how one is going to use information, not just the scope and quality of the information. Is that just one use of a more general project for providing location guides for every location in the world? Would that be a project that could encompass what Wikivoyage does and ensure it was providing useful information to everyone, incuding current residents of those locales? The latter would help ensure a steady stream of information to such a project -- everyone lives near a place, institution, or business that is of interest to someone else who is planning to go to that location.

Is this a topic that gets discussed on any of the projects that are already out there? Is it necessary to reproduce a traditional paper guidebook, or is there something more universal that can be realized online? Are services like foursquare actually providing 'locale guide' information that would be useful in a free collaborative resource? –SJ talk  19:28, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

• Ok, this is something I tried to raise a number of times. (Note that my opinion does not mean anything since I am currently not a member of WT nor WV community, though I maintain a travel guide site - I am sure these questions have been solved in both communities ages ago). In the first approximation, yes, it should provide location guides - just ideally to list everything which remotely can qualify as a sight; every restaurant; every travel connection etc. However if this all we can do it would probably have very limited usability, because it will be a lot of unstructured or badly structured information. The real guides know very well how to improve the structure: (a) having the target audience (for instance, backpackers for Rough Guide or city package tourists for Marco Polo - I am exagerrating a bit to provide a point); (b) having a rating system. None seems to be an option for us, but may be one can do smth like Wikiproject system - for instance, if I am a single 25y female interested in active recreation (in fact, I am not) I would go to the corresponding Wikiproject and see what is rated best for me. But even plain lists of monuments which are being prepared on WP for WLM I already found useful for travel - in any case just plain list of attractions in the form of location guides would be even more useful.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:57, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

User:Pharos is already doing something similar called as proposed here [3] and is interested in joining this proposed Wiki.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:31, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

This is an interesting thread. In my experience of using WT (and remembering that, as with any Wiki, it is incomplete) the content tends to be broadly quite general (i.e. aimed at most travellers) with a slight overall emphasis on the traditional tourist model. Other pages have more specialist or different focuses depending on who wrote them. As Ymblanter points out; catering for everyone is very difficult (especially as it requires a writer with those interests) in one page. Bringing together a "database" of things-at-a-location (with associated metadata) and travel guide writing is a tough one. But what does spring to mind is WIKIDATA :) It might provide an avenue to solving my gripe about "listings" as well as a lot of the above. Unless I have totally mistake Wikidata's aim it would be prime for databasing a lot of that material; Country -> City -> Area -> Hotels -> {name,price-range,description ... reviews[1,2,3,4]}. Wikidata could then be filtered onto the page - and perhaps a way developed to highlight specific recommendations based on e.g. editors choices, or a meta keyword (like... sailing etc.). Then we could look at encouraging sub-pages with more specialist guides. (really the traditional Wiki model is not well suited to this as what really is needed is a lot of snippets of semantic data that can be combined into the page each traveller wants to read). --ErrantX (talk) 20:03, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Commercialization fears

In The Signpost fears of the liability of a travel guide to commercialization have been raised. Although this might to be an obvious problem it is this only to a certain extend. Our experience in Wikivoyage is, that the community reacts quick and removes concealed ads. We are not more liable than Wikipedia. In WP some companys try to sneak in a fovourable profil and sometimes in a very clandestine way. I think, when the first traveller comes to a shabby shed instead a shiny hotel those information will be changed if they have been unnoticed so far. --Der Reisende (talk) 16:34, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

• Yes, I noticed that. I find it absolutely inappropriate for Signpost to publish such opinions without attributing them--Ymblanter (talk) 17:47, 11 July 2012 (UTC)