Jump to content

Wikivoyage/Summit/Archive/2013-08

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

August 2013

[edit]

Sorry, for not providing a July report. I am reporting from the Wikimania in Hong Kong. so firstly I am going to some general information. Yesterday James an me held a presentation about Wikivoyage (the link to the slides will be provided here). There where about 40 or maybe more Wikimaniacs following us. The feedback during the Wikimania was 100 per cent great from everybody. People like Wikivoyage. Thanks to everybody on WV as well to all the Wikimedians. I talked to the Wikidata guys. So I started the listing-RfC at Wikidata. I also talked to some guys concerning the Google rank. I hopefully found the right person. They want to have it fixed.

I had a nice talk to the Affiliates Committee. The process to become an official Thematic Organisation is on a great way and all things are fine. So I will encourage you guys to consider to become a member or a volunteer/supporter of the WV association. The last ones are users who do more work than just writing articles. I think about the guys who take care of the twitter account (Thanks) and the German one who works on the map features. I am going to setup an extra page for them. It will be a part of the annual report to the AffCom about our activities. An active and big association and its supporters will help the project to get features and resources. More information later.

The state of the wiki: fortunately we've been able to finish the cleanup in January/February since them we focused on and completed the following issues/discussions

  • What to do with stubs? - Keeping the existing ones but encouraging contributors to fill them up with content, if not, then changing them to a redirect to the next hierarchy level's article
  • Introducing classifications - We decided to introduce 5 classes as used on en: ( from stub to star) to make the articles better comparable. We should work on improving the LocDB do get an overview about a destination and its articles.
  • besides that: business as usual

Questions to the communities: How do you think about placing links to WP inside the normal article text? I was asked about this in HK during Wikimania.

Collaboration between language versions: In future we should discuss about issues and features that affect more than one language version on meta: I found the mapmaking expeditions on en: This expeditions should be held on meta:, not en: a German member is heavily involved (he started the features) and it affects all language versions. Other contributors have no chance to notice it. Please think first and then start the discussion/expedition on meta: if necessary. We have two leading language versions and some smaller ones. We should give all of them a chance to develop this project. I am about to get a tool/bot that allows us to drop a message at all lounges on Wikivoyage. This can make it easier to announce recently started discussions.

Starting next month I am going to leave an extra report about the Wikivoyage Association here. -- DerFussi 08:26, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Links to Wikipedia generate endless discussions. It will be much easier if we make it a forbidden topic, because it distracts people from useful contributions to the project=)
Regarding the discussions and collaborations, I find it difficult to follow things on Meta, because I only check pages in my Watchlist (is it possible to add the whole Wikivoyage namespace, including new pages, into the Watchlist?) I think that it is much easier to keep relevant discussions in different language versions, where most people are active, and post announcements here, which is probably the main idea behind this whole Summit thing. --Atsirlin (talk) 09:55, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Atsirlin that it's not, unfortunately, very practical to work on major initiatives like the mapmaking expeditions (there are three mapping expeditions on en). If we move them to meta, we will get less comment, and when we then try to introduce them locally, users will complain of not having been involved in the process! I think the safest way to proceed would be to keep such discussions local, and be sure to share what is going on in the summits, monthly. A tool to post to all pubs would be very helpful, though. --Peter Talk 21:58, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
May be central (meta) announcements for important discussions would be a good idea.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:28, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But the mapmaking expeditions are essential to all language versions - even the WMF technical staff should have an eye on it. We should work towards upcoming new WMF map features. If you just talk on en: you can not avoid to be considered as egocentric. Especially you should not have any problem to discuss on meta. It's your native language. And it's no problem to drop a message at your traveller's pub about expeditions and discussions on meta. @Atsirlin. I think no. Most communities are smaller than ours. And you can not expect that go-betweens transfer the conclusions of local discussions to an expedition here. Even me, I am sinking in communication duties here. There is no man power. You are locking others out of discussions. And within one month you local guys may found a kind of consensus already and after the month local discussions may be obsolete meanwhile. So others have just to accept and swallow it or we have to set your discussion to a prior point of time and start again. You expect from us to follow meta and the summit. Can we expect the same from you? I am about to establish a tool to drop messages in every traveler's pub. I even can add user talk pages to the list. I'll keep you up-to-date. Thanks guys, just think about it. the only thing I can do is just saying: please! Many greetings from the northernmost point of the wonderful island of Borneo. :) -- DerFussi 04:56, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just found your roadmap. Why not develop it here on meta? We have the same wish for the breadcrumb. Roland has written the extension. ::::I established it on the LocDB already (Inactive now due to changes on the MW-API) Why not working together? Here. Two communities have more impact. Due to my migration work together with the WMF guys and the contacts via Wikimania I know some of the guys in person. Maybe its easier just to contact them and ask how we should do it, and where to drop the inquiries? Wikidata team works in Berlin. I can just simply call, if I need some technical information. The whole development should be a community process of course. But maybe I can help. -- DerFussi 05:14, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have offered to join the LGBT user group and proposed a collaboration to improve gay travel related content and guidelines. here... -- DerFussi 05:22, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm totally in favour of centralizing on Wikivoyage/Lounge the discussion about the main topics. I have the same issue expressed by DerFussi: too many page to check mixed with too many things too do. But at the end of the day I try to roaming around the various wikis offering help as well, because I can't belive that an interlingual teamworking it's not possible. Regarding the observation of Peter, I would say that to receive less comment in the en:voy it's for sure true on the short term, but educating all the wikivoyagers to have a look on the meta lounge, this won't be true on the mid/long term. All of you, start to add a link in the very top of your local lounge/bar (why don't we all call it lounge?) a permanent (i.e. to not be archived) link to the meta lounge, I've done it time ago. I think that this is the very first step to do.
This summit, ideated long time ago by de:voy, re-proposed by me and started by Peter, it's nice and useful to share the status of the various wiki, but the 99% of what we write are statements that don't generate discussion, maybe ideas sharing. --Andyrom75 (talk) 05:59, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you can try to bring all important discussions on meta, but I think that it simply will not work. Importantly, we have to reach consensus within each language version, but we are not obliged to synchronize everything between different languages. It is one of the reasons why many people will never check what is happening on meta, no matter how many links in the lounge/pub we post. --Alexander (talk) 08:03, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So you are in favour to treat each language version as separate projects? --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:21, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, I am not, but I try to be realistic. Wikivoyage has 14 language versions, yet about half of them are not even represented here. English and German Wikivoyages are already very different in format and style. We need a parallel development, but we don't have to be literal translations of each other. --Alexander (talk) 08:44, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think there could at least be a list or summary of current active expeditions on Meta, and then any project page here will deal solely with technicalities. For the listing editor for example, I will copy it over here, but each project must adjust it themselves, or post on the Talk page for help.
I've never seen the Dynamic maps Expedition on en.voy as the lead project page (although the German page hasn't had any activity since March), because it's geared to making it work according to local en.voy consensus. The German, Russian and even French Wikivoyages all implemented dynamic maps on hundreds of pages before the English Wikivoyage, because they were OK with manually numbering and a basic link to the map, while en.voy wanted autonumbering and in-wiki maps. And these customisations also need admin rights, which are not available on meta. Testing is also easier to carry out on full language articles.
What may help is a test wiki -- there is one or two floating around WMF labs but I haven't checked out how they work. The dynamic maps also definitely need outreach with WMF labs, particularly for a tile server and map styles. -- torty3 (talk) 10:22, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Alexander, you were talking about the versions not represented. I think that at the base there's a general misunderstanding on what I'm trying to say. On meta we shall not take a decision for all the languages (including them), it's just a place to share information and collect feedback interlingual feedback (hence from different point of view). Talking on meta about the development, doesn't mean that all the voys must be identical, but give a chance during the development phase to be aware of what is happening and contribute in an active way on that improvement, then each wiki at the end of the first release can decide to implement it or not, according to the community decision. Taking as an example the (excellent) dynamic maps mentioned by Torty. In it:voy we have decide to postpone their implementation because of workforce: too many activities in place at the moment to bear this one too. I wasn't aware about the automatic numbering activity that en:voy is looking at; good to know, and good to read it here. This could change the timing of their implementation, because this feature can speed it up. --Andyrom75 (talk) 06:45, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree Andyrom75. By the way. The POI and dynamic maps features started on voy:de and now we are forced to follow it on en: That's the impression users may have now. So in my opinion this is not the interlingual collaboration we should actually have. The technical stuff and different ways of implementation (Button, info box, thumbnail ...) should be developed and discussed here on meta. And each WV language can decide , how to use it. That's the way we should collaborate. Besides the Meta wiki is multilingual. So we can provide at least an overview about the expedition in each language and readers are informed in their native language. - Sorry, just after implementing the first poi feature I should have moved it to meta, that's what I have learned now. It was my fault not to do it. Just dropped messages everywhere about it. Next week I will establish a message feature. Then we should be able to drop messages on all lounges and selected user talk pages. More information about it when its up and running. -- DerFussi 03:05, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the de.voy page should have been moved to meta from the beginning to set the example, then this whole appearance of en.voy taking over would not have occurred. Tech configurations like icon shapes, colours, sizes, map styles all need to be discussed as a group. Even now I only read about stuff like HTTP/HTTPS because I check Joachim's German userpage. @DerFussi and RolandUnger, Sharihareswara (WMF) asked about information or updates about the security certificate for the map server. -- torty3 (talk) 05:46, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am somehow confused. Is this not what this page is for? I guess we have a reasonable overview of all expeditions currently occurring (at least in the projects represented here).--Ymblanter (talk) 11:18, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We've had another very productive month in terms of feature development, most notably we are about to deploy a listing editor, which you can read about at voy:Wikivoyage:Roadmap/Improved editing interface#New listing editor. We will deploy it on voy/en this week, and it will restore the [edit listing] and [add listing] links. It looks better than ever, thanks to Torty3! Presumably, this is something all language versions will want to adopt and adapt.

Rapid development of dynamic maps continues, with good examples of latest work at Roppongi, Virgin Gorda, and Rheinsteig.

Stefan has opened a request for comment regarding the possibility to move our listing data to Wikidata, so we can share details like price, addresses, opening hours, etc. between all language projects. This will also allow "multilingual dynamic maps," which show all listings from all language versions for an area! I believe this will become our next main priority in terms of feature development in the coming months.

Stefan has also added a Bugzilla report inquiring into why voy:en has a very low PageRank for the main page.

Our number one Bugzilla request, Bugzilla:43977, sadly remains unfulfilled after 7 months. If users from other language versions are also interested in making grouped edits (javascript enabled) patrollable, please mention this on the Bugzilla report, and consider upvoting its importance. --Peter Talk 04:56, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

By the way we replaced hundreds WT links in Russian and Ukrainian wikipedias by the English Wikivoyage links (about this issue was reported on Wikimania). We hope that it helps voy.en to get better results from search engines. ;-)
Why not the Russian Wikivoyage for links from the Russian Wikipedia? LtPowers (talk) 15:53, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Because we don't have articles about destinations in Butan, Japan and some other countries that were linked to from Russian Wikipedia. There was even a link to an article in Finnish WT! I redirected this one to English WV, which has a decent article on the topic. --Atsirlin (talk) 17:47, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Months ago (as written in the July report) I've added interproject links from it:w to it:voy. Can someone "seek 'n destoy" ...well replace... the WT links on it:w as done for the other languages? I believe that you have used a tool and not manually. In the unlikely case that article exists in it:WT but not in it:voy just let me know and I'll work on that (those?) to create it. Thanks, --Andyrom75 (talk) 06:25, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Most links were replaced by changing the {{wikitravel}} template on Wikipedia. You can probably ask K7L how he dealt with the remaining, explicit en: links. We did everything by hand, because Russian Wikipedia linked to WT in different languages, including languages that are not available in WV, and we had to sort out which link to put. --Alexander (talk) 07:52, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, there was a Template:wikitravel? I'm pretty sure that we don't have it in it:w. However I'll ask th K7L, thanks for the advice. --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:16, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]


I am still on holiday. I am in Kota Kinabalu now and still see broken file links. How is the state of your clean up work? These broken file links are not very attracting to readers. Please focus more on that. I know, working on new things is much more fun. But the clean up is important -- DerFussi 03:34, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fussi, the problem with the broken links is getting smaller but the rest are lots of user page where at least i'm hesitant to delete them. I think within the next two or three months, most pics in articles have been solved but we need a consensus for user pages. Jc8136 (talk) 12:33, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Social media

[edit]

Both of Wikivoyage's presences on social networks have seen growth in the last month. Facebook likes have risen to 129, whilst Twitter followers have swelled to 164. With the latter in particular (of which I have some knowledge), we have contacted various tourism organisations and tried to bring particularly good articles to the interest of our followers. Unfortunately, submissions for articles to be tweeted have rather dried up, so those featured have been selected by me on a whim. If you'd like to see something tweeted, please post here. I've also taken the liberty of registering 'Wikivoyage' on YouTube, after an oblique reference to it was made in the EN pub. Of course, anything of that nature would require prior discussion and consensus. --Nick talk 18:44, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We've had a calmed month since the last Summit. As reported in the previous report, the Spanish Wikivoyage was off to a slow startm and thus progress in the matter of accomplishments and advances have been slow. This has also been affected by the fact that several of our most prolific contributors have been unable to edit, or out on Wikibreak since July. However, there has been several minor news since then:

  1. Automatic categories and subcategoires of the Babel extension have been approved and implemented.
  2. The listings magic words have been fully translated and transformed into easy-to-use templates.
  3. The Wikidata client has been successfully adopted, and all interwiki links have been moved to Wikidata.

Now, about the matters beenb discussed, several design changes are on the way. Major steps that would take place soon are: The intriduction of a formalized template to write articles about countries. Unlike other Wikivoyages, several members of the Spanish Wikivoyage consider that articles about contries should be as brief and short as possible, and that most detailed information should be moved to articles about cities or other destinations. According to this belief, a new pair of template designs (País-top and País-mid) have been created and will be discussed soon. These templates are designed to to make navigating through contries and articles within countries more easier. An early example of how the template should look is currently at Islas Salomón.

Apart from that, a manual of style is currently being planned for September, containing recommendations and structure guidelines for different types of articles. Also, this manual of style will include the guidelines to establish a proper geographical hierarchy among our articles. Now, about Teguxo's July report: We know that es.wikivoyage is, to some extent, unorganized in relation to other interactions of Wikivoyage like the English or the Russian ones. Other of Texugo's concerns is the fact that we are drawing a line between the model used by most Wikivoyages to manage articles and ours. We believe that consistency among several versions of Wikivoyage depends on the community, and we've decided that we will keep such consistency only in areas we agreed to, and follow our own path wherever we need to.

My only comment is that there is no reason to be worried about this. The nature of this principle relies on the evolution of Wikipedia itself, and can also be evidenced at other sister projects. For example, the Spanish Wikinews is completely different than the English Wikinews, and yet they manage to do cross-wiki collaborations smoothly. Same with Spanish Wikibooks and English Wikibooks. In short, every wiki has its own level of independence and uniqueness. Trying to force a single standard among all language versions of a wiki is almost impossible, and that's a key point that represents almost all projects under the Wikimedia brand.

However, I expect to bring more good news next month. I am doing my best to gather consensus to move forward in our little project, and given that we are a small community, things do not usually move fast. Cheers. — ΛΧΣ21 23:19, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the primary concerns about es:voy were the lack of transparency (important decisions made off-site without reaching consensus) and the lack of well-defined policies/manual of style. It is nice to hear that at least the second problem is going to be solved. It looks like es:voy wants to introduce nice design (your new country template is cute, I like it!), but probably at the cost of not providing relevant travel information, which is always text-based. While I think that the External links section or the shortening of the country articles is a matter of taste and understanding the travel (if you don't want to write about countries in general, you don't understand the travel – but this is my personal opinion only), several issues are really important and should be kept similar throughout all language versions. Apart from the decision-making and policies (each project should have one...), it is very important to maintain a reasonable geographical hierarchy and create articles only about destinations or valid travel topics. Otherwise, we essentially loose the opportunity of adding interwiki links, and different language versions become complete detached. --Atsirlin (talk) 08:35, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hey. The last two points in your comment, "to maintain a reasonable geographical hierarchy and create articles only about destinations or valid travel topics" is a key element for us. We have already taken care of the notability part (the policy is already written and approved) and we will take care soon of the hierarchies. About the new design, it is a beta version only, and has yet to go through several improvements. We do want to talk about the countries, bo do so only on a basic level, trying to avoid whatever could be found on Wikipedia.
About the lack of transparency, I cannot offer you an accurate answer to that question. I arrived to the Spanish Wikivoyage on Feburary 16 and many of the thinks that were tagged as "lacking transparence" took place before I joined the community. Thus, I cannot honestly say that we haven't been transparent, because we have been. All our discussions have been held on-wiki and are properly archived. Some others are nothing but standards that were imported from our culture as Wikipedians. However, I agree with most of your comments, although I have yet to understand the travel :) Cheers. — ΛΧΣ21 18:12, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Great! I look forward to hearing more news from es:voy! --Atsirlin (talk) 19:21, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree with the idea of "lack of transparency" that was presented by Texugo in the last report. I don't see any case where a decision has been made outside Wikiviajes... in fact, several proposals have been discussed lengthly in our equivalent of the Pub (some accepted, some rejected). Most of the proposals that came directly from Spanish Wikipedia, in fact, were discarded for being too bureaucratic and for being relevant for an encyclopedia and not for a travel guide. Probably, this misconception comes from the fact that many issues have never even been proposed for regulation (and probably not deserve one). I remember a complaint for allegedly authorizing the use of videos or footnotes... when there never was a proposal to regulate this, neither for nor against, and the users just started to use some of the features included in the project.
We started from scratch, copying most of the rules from the English Wikivoyage and some of them from Spanish Wikipedia, considering most of our users have some experience there. But, also, we have tried to not set rules for everything, see the development of the project and then regulate what we think is important, not taking away things that might be valuable for us. We have already spent too much time working on the basic rules and not in the content... but now I think we already have some ideas on how to write a Manual of Style, define the criteria of relevance, solve the issue of countries, etc., etc. --Osmar Valdebenito, B1mbo (talk) 02:35, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the disconnect is the idea of starting from scratch. For anyone involved with the project previously, that effectively means sudden radical change without discussion, because there was an existing project! Spanish Wikitravel at one time had an active community, with plenty of content development, commonly decided rules and practices, and even major press coverage in the Spanish media. The community died for some organic reasons, but mostly because of Internet Brands' introduction of ads and general neglect in the site, and corporate disinterest in the language versions other than en. The community that did continue to exist, fighting spammers and vandals, and trying to at least preserve the good content and structures in place, was basically just Texugo, who did that hard work with no thanks. So summarily discarding so much of that work to "start from scratch" is understandably a source of frustration for him!
It's great if there is lots of creative rethinking taking place on es right now, and I think the gist of most reports at these summits is that our whole community is very excited about the large amount of experimentation and development that has taken place in this year. But at times I worry that es is trying to "reinvent the wheel" and shouldn't be afraid to copy useful practices from the Spanish Wikitravel from which it emerged, and from the other language versions, which have had ten years of experience answering some of the questions you are asking. Being too different could also frustrate cooperation regarding feature developments, especially ones like dynamic maps and visual editing (like the listings editor), which rely on certain shared standards in how we present and organize travel content. --Peter Talk 06:35, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well said. Es: is the only version that assumed it was "starting over from scratch", which appears to have been decided off-site during the incubator phase. As I commented elsewhere, it is if they rather ungratefully inherited the building we were constructing, disinterestedly threw out the original blueprints without a glance, didn't even properly evaluate the structure of what was already built, knocked out various walls and supports at random without considering what their purpose might have been, and continued adding things on randomly without any plan whatsoever. I have been avoiding es: over the last month, mainly because it makes me very upset and I still do not feel very welcome there, but also because I am hoping some of the feedback here will somehow lead them back into the fold. Texugo (talk) 18:39, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We have finally agreed to implement page banners and started a long collaborative effort on adding page banners to every article in Russian Wikivoyage. We plan to develop original banners, especially for destinations in Russia, but we also decided to allow generic banners like clay tiles, azure sea and charming Russian landscapes that can be used for less-known destinations where good panoramic photos are not available. We feel that the default page banner for English Wikivoyage is somewhat dark and sad, and seeing it in half of our pages will be a bit annoying.

The work on page banners is part of our more general effort on a major overhaul of all articles in Russian Wikivoyage. We plan to do the following:

  • add page banners
  • add dynamic maps, which we merged into the standard geo template. This way, we specify the coordinates and map zoom level only once per article. The map is collapsible and extends to 1000px (in fact, we would appreciate ideas on how to scale the map width with the screen width!)
  • add a simple citybar template that collects basic information about the destination and ensures that we have at least one photo per article
  • add geographical coordinates to existing listings
  • remove unnecessary attributions to Wikitravel. We agreed to delete empty articles before adding new content

We also plan to add dynamic "destination maps" to regional articles. Although inferior to hand-drawn maps, these dynamic maps provide a nice overview of available Wikivoyage articles and their locations.

We look forward to new developments that Peter has mentioned. Dynamic maps are a great feature indeed, but we still have to sort out how to make them more static. For example, how to provide users with relevant static images in the printed version?

Finally, I will keep the tradition of mentioning new good articles that deserve translation. This time, we have Suzdal, one of the oldest and most charming Russian towns that is frequently visited by Russian people and foreign tourists alike. --Atsirlin (talk) 17:31, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The main development on the french version of Wikivoyage for this month is the creation of a citybar and a regionbar which enclose the dynamic map. Dynamic map are present in the citybar to don't create a specific Location map similar as the one already used on wikipedia as it's used in german wikivoyage. It also includes the geo model to don't repeat coordinates. Those template are curently place on existing article by several contributors and are included in the preload article's skeleton for new articles. Banners are included now in 500+ articles, 964 articles are already evaluated on a total of 3060 articles.

Last month, we asked Ryan to remove old listing's tags to template. He promised to help us when he finished with the russian version so wait and see...

Our project are:

  • Add the city bar
  • Add the page banner
  • Increase the use of the listing template, still a lot of page don't use listings at all.
  • Add coordinates in the existing listings
  • Add contents
  • Follow the developments on the bigger wikivoyage as listings edit or wikidata vcard.

From our Café des Voyageurs:

  • Debate of the opportunity to remove or not the links to the official web site at the begin of the text when it's now included in the citybar.
  • Debate after the removal of a link to Wikivoyage of a french village on fr. wikipedia because Wikivoyage contains commercial links.

This month were elected 2 bureaucrats (both already admins) and 1 administrator.

As conclusion, we still have some cleaning work, good enough presentation work and a lot of contents works to become usable guide for the common francophone travelers.--Adehertogh (talk) 11:53, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could you may be expand on the fr.wp decision to delete the Wikivoyage link? What was the motivation? Are the links now totally prohibited everywhere?--Ymblanter (talk) 16:51, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It was a few contributors of the WP french communes project (and only on this project) who rejected the link because of the "commercial links in WV", they removed few of them but we argument that wikivoyage is a part of the same foundation as WP. So we already reverted the removing and the links are now on WP. Our conclusion is that could be better if the links are automatically implemented by wikidata to avoid that kind of talks. --Adehertogh (talk) 19:31, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see, thanks for the clarification.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:43, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Let me:

  • summarize/translate my post of the 1st/2nd of August in the Italian Lounge and give an update on the themes discussed on the Italian report of the July summit
  • and give few highlight of the activities I've made on the Wikimania 2013 held last week in HK
What has been done
  1. High coverage level (~90%) of the Quickbar in each article.
  2. Creation and implementation of the QuickbarPark to be applied on park related articles.
  3. Removed unnecessary gadget like moodbar and HotInterwiki.
  4. Expedition section has been created, and as a guide line, it has been created the first expedition.
  5. After the implementation of the new homepage we have reactivated the destination of the month and in order to avoid delay in the change of the destination we have automaed that through it:voy:Template:Homebanner.
  6. We have cleaned all the articles title that erroneously had a slash in the title according to an old and not anymore existing rule (e.g. country/region). Considering that no one in en:voy and de:voy knows valid reason to keep the slash for the district we are evaluating to clean those title too in order to harmonize them within it:voy and within all the wiki-project.
  7. Implementation of the first Lua module inside it:voy to manage the interproject link. This is more flexible in comparison with the previous "classic" template version.
What's going on
  1. Pagebanner importing/creation is still in progress. As well is in progress the full coverage of the Quickbar: ~175 are missing to complete the job.
  2. Quickbar image: each quickbar shall have it's own image, and this almost easy job has been completed for ~90% of the articles.
  3. Regionlist template implementation has been formalized as an expedition (as mentioned above). It's coverage for the country is quite high (>60%) while for the region is still low (<10%), however is in progress.
What's next
  1. Cleaning is still the top priority because there's a lot of work that must be done in order to harmonized the content of the various articles.
  2. Policy and template manual implementation: minor progress on this point.
  3. Implement more dedicated Quickbar for example for archeological sites, Dependences, etc.. to better describe the toponym in the article. As shown above, we have currently implemented only QuickbarPark
  4. I've agreed with it.wikipedia people to shift the "not encyclopedic turistic information" from it:w to it:voy. This will have a dual benefit for both project. Soon we'll prepare a wikipedia event to start this task.
Vision
  1. During Wikimania I've discussed with some people from wikidata and considering that it:voy has a massive use of Quickbar (consequently of the Quickbar information) we have agreed on prioritize the implementation of those data inside wikidata within the end of this year, so I'll be wikivoyage interface for this pilot. This will free a lot of our resources currently spent on the quickbar and at the same time will allow us to use the most updated information without the need of update them.
  2. In Wikimania I've contacted also the VisualEditor team in order to implement, not the full editor, but just the listing popup editor. It's technically feasible and should be enough easy to maintain once implemented. Differently on the previous point I've got not official support; we are still discussing about it.
  3. POI interactive map no progress on this point. Currently it's not a priority, although it's something that for sure will be implemented.
Wikimania
  1. As shown in the vision section, I've tried to increase the visibility of this project versus other "wiki department" (I like teamworking .... although not always seems to be possible ;-))
  2. I've made unofficial wikivoyage presentation to the Italian Wikimedia team and to some people from the Latin Iberocoop team the day before of the official presentation held by DerFussi and JamesA. I have been really glad to see that almost one third of the people present in the room came from this session :-) On top of this I've agreed to set up some collaboration with them regarding the Italian article grow.
  3. I've translated in Italian the main content of the official presentation that we have prepared and the more significant arisen questions, and I've published them in the Italian Wikimedia site.

Thanks to Romaine, the Dutch Wikivoyage was the first language version to fully implement integration with Wikidata for all articles. Ischa1 has been implementing a category structure that will automatically add categories based on the breadcrumb, similar to other language versions.

Now we're exploring if and how to implement the listing editor and pagebanners. The first seems relatively difficult to implement, and both need a bot run to get things going. I've been using AWB to at least try to get a harmonized set of section headers, but a bot run would be better for this as well. Globe-trotter (talk) 15:48, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As I mentioned on the nl Travelller's Pub, the page banners, whereas definitely need manpower, can be implemented relatively easily. I think many people from other language versions would help.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:54, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, If you need help, just drop a line. I can try to help, if a helping hand is needed. -- DerFussi 15:03, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

First the bad news: Regular contributors in the past month have been limited to, well, me. The second most active user has not been active since July 10 and the second admin appears to have popped in only once since June 23. Other activity has been quite sporadic. A complete lack of a community who discusses things means we are currently paralyzed in terms of new initiatives which I would like to bring up (pagebanners, filling in policy gaps, etc.). Without at least a sounding board for feedback, if I plunge forward unilaterally with any major improvements, I may leave myself open to being accused of tyranny later on, so I'm not really sure what to do with that. Any advice on how bold I should be in plunging forward would be greatly appreciated.

Now for the good news:

  • Implementation of our geo template is now up to approximately 25% of all articles
  • A dozen or so new articles have been started by casual users
  • I have personally gone through every city article in the state of São Paulo, which represents our densest coverage, with about 14% of all our city articles, and done the following:
  • converted all unformatted listings to our new listing template
  • added missing geo info
  • added missing WP links
  • corrected MoS problems
  • Some minor improvements to help pages
  • Wikidata interwikis were rolled out, as on other versions, and the old manual interwikis have been largely removed by bot where appropriate
  • Torty3's listing editor for en: has been translated and implemented, with just a couple of small bug fixes needed (this has been on our to-do list for a while)

Goals for the immediate future - well, mine anyway - are to:

  • continue with conversion of unformatted listings, geo tags, and wp links
  • clean up the last 84 articles tagged with style problems
  • start collaborating with/following en: dynamic maps project (seems impossible without a community to voice support for it; see bad news above)
  • consider implementing pagebanners (seems impossible without a community to voice support for it; see bad news above)
  • finish the help pages for certain listing types
  • fix a couple of problems with the listing editor

And, most importantly, to attract more contributors, which is more of a hope or a wish. I don't know if there are any initiatives to get bots inserting links from WP to us, or if Wikidata will start taking care of that automatically. That may help. Certainly any other suggestions/referrals would be welcome. Texugo (talk) 16:14, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In the total absence of a community, I'd be inclined to recommend obscure tyranny. (Of course it helps that I already know that you would be pretty benevolent.) Your sounding board could even be right here--interproject consultation? Obviously it would be better to have local users to consult, but if they're not there, they're not there. Have any projects rejected pagebanners or dynamic maps? If they haven't, then it's probably safe to go forward with them on pt. I have trouble imagining much opposition to either, in any rate. --Peter Talk 21:53, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Peterfitzgerald, a word in you local pub and if no opposition, go ahead good mapping, näice banners will maybe attract new contributors. --Adehertogh (talk) 06:05, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See the glass half full: at least in pt:voy you shouldn't have difficulties to find consensus as you had in es:voy :-D
Seriously speaking, I'm implementing the ListingEditor as well in these days, and, as everyone mentioned above, it's a tricky procedure. I've checked both the en/pt/it:voy versions, and you want to know the most funny thing? We have three different kind of bugs :-D The best person to help us is for sure Torty3 but maybe he's on holiday, if you want we can have a separate discussion to try to make it works. --Andyrom75 (talk) 06:45, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I needed a break after the past few weeks, sorry for the non-replies. There needs to be better instructions and examples for translation but otherwise is not that hard to set up. Texugo has made the closest translation, but still a little off. -- torty3 (talk) 10:07, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Torty, thanks for your help that you gave me today. I still have 5 issues to be solved, let me know when you'll come back and I'll try to be online to support you with some test/feedback. Thanks, --Andyrom75 (talk) 21:57, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This project has been created for two weeks.

Done!
  • Contents were imported completely from incubator.
  • Al prefixs (wy/vi) have been cleaned up.
  • Page banner template is added to all articles.
  • The custom mediawiki pages have been set up.
Work isn't finished yet.
  • Migrate iw to wikidata, it needs help.

--Cheers! (talk) 16:07, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the report, and welcome to Wikivoyage community. Concerning the interwiki, the easiest way is to wait until the new dump of the database becomes available, then go here to check you do not have problems with interwiki, and once the problems have been solved, removed the links by a bot.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:10, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]