Your Ad Here
better answers  
sponsors

search
web directory
news
travel
maps
forums
free voip
chat irc
games
video
live tv
add site


News

Top | Arts | Business | Computers | Games | Health | Kids | News | Recreation | Reference | Regional | Science | Shopping | Society | Sports | World | Regional | Languages | News | Blogs
brujula .net

toolbar
referir por email
agregar a favorito
traducir a EN IT FR GE PF CN JA KO RU AR
digg delicious stumble gbook reddit
Texto + grande + chico
Plunge forward!

Wikitravel:Travellers' pub

From Wikitravel

Jump to: navigation, search
Contents

The Travellers' pub is the place to ask questions when you're confused, lost, afraid, tired, annoyed, thoughtful, or helpful. Please check the FAQ and Help page before asking a question, though, since that may save your time and others'. Also, if you have a question or suggestion about a particular article, try using talk pages to keep the discussion specific to that article.

If you are having a problem that you think has to do with the Mediawiki software, please post that on the Technical requests page on Wikitravel Shared instead.

Please add new questions at the bottom of the page and sign your post by appending four tildes (~~~~) to it, but otherwise plunge forward!

[edit] Archives

Keeping the Pub clean is a group effort. If we have too many conversations on this page, it gets too noisy and hard to read. If you see a conversation that could or should be moved to a talk page, please do so, and note the move here.

Stuff that's been moved:

Also, see the Travellers' pub archives for older archived discussions.

[edit] Please sweep the pub

So, the TP has been getting kinda crowded and messy. I'd really appreciate if we could all make an effort to clean up a bit by moving discussions to places more appropriate or deleting discussions that have reached their conclusions. It's a tedious job, but like most, it's easier if we do it together. --Evan 16:44, 20 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Should we sweep this out? -- Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 03:20, 16 August 2006 (EDT)
Ugh, this place is getting messy and this is the one page I hate to attempt to organize. Anyone want to take a stab at cleaning it up? -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 18:29, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Phishing

I don't think Evan posted this, yet, because he was having trouble with the wifi in SJ, but don't answer any emails requesting credit card information from an email purporting to be affiliated with Wikitravel. This is a scam and several emails were sent out to Wikia users. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 21:55, 15 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Add a counter to articles?

Hello, I'd like to know if it would be possible to add a counter to Wikitravel articles, so that editors could see how many times a particular page has been viewed. Would this be possible? Any interest? SONORAMA 09:29, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

I'd second that suggestion, if it is feasible. I haven't been able to find any statistics on article views, which would be useful and interesting. --Peterfitzgerald Talk 09:34, 1 May 2007 (EDT)
$wgDisableCounters is likely set to "yes" in LocalSettings.php as a mater of style because hit counters are so last century. The simple hit counter also counts search engine spiders and other robot spider hits. So it is not an accurate measure of human page visits. I keep the hit counter display turned on in my wiki so I wont feel so lonely (see top of the centered text block at bottom of any regular page at http://wikigogy.org ). We don't need that at Wikitravel because Wikitravel actually rocks. Page edits and quality of text is a more accurate measure of community interest in a wiki. Evan could probably turn the counter display back on if persuaded. Do we really want it though? --Rogerhc 00:43, 3 June 2007 (EDT)
I like the idea, as well...the site's high traffic reflects well on all the good work going into these articles. Redondo 19:42, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Vandals

Can we IP ban them?

Please see Wikitravel:How to handle unwanted edits for more on how we like to deal with stuff like this. Thanks. Maj 16:19, 9 May 2007 (EDT)
thanks looked for something like that but didn't see it

[edit] Table of contents

Well, the new table of contents looks great, I think. The only problem I see is that it now appears at the top when viewing differences, pushing the differences over so that one has to sidescroll to see everything. Can we suppress the TOC when viewing differences, as we did before? Or simply push it down below the differences into the article where it would normally appear? 220.2.118.238 17:43, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

Issues related to the new ToC are being discussed here. --Peterfitzgerald Talk 21:27, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

[edit] UniversalWikiEditButton

Coming out of RecentChangesCamp Montreal (RoCoCo) in May 2007 there was a sense that there is an opportunity to "brand" the edit button on wikis in the same way that the little orange radio waves icon is used to indicate a feed. This diffuse impulse is trying to coalesce here: http://www.aboutus.org/UniversalWikiEditButton

Thoughts? —The preceding comment was added by Brandon CS Sanders (talk • contribs) .

I think it's a great idea... I voted over there, and will keep an eye on how it develops. – cacahuate talk 15:23, 22 May 2007 (EDT)
Very cool idea, it will be nice having a recognizable button on all wikis. Have voted and added my comments there. --NJR_ZA 01:31, 24 May 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Applying for a passport

I have to replace my passport and while I've applied for a passport before I wasn't quite sure if my passport was damaged enough so that I'd be required to re-apply in person and pay the more expensive fees or if I could simply use a renewal form and pay the $67 fee, plus the expedited fee.

After trying to get hold of NPIC for an entire day I decided to stay up all night and wait until 06:00 then call (earliest possible time I could get a hold of an operator). I finally got a hold of someone and they saved me about $70 by telling me to do the renewal form.

This is going somewhere... just give me a second. Now, also with the new border crossing rules that require a passport when flying to/from 'them who are up north', Mexico, the US' Caribbean passports are likely to needed by several million more Americans than the previously 5 - 6 million who applied annually. Also, since by the end of January next year a passport will be required at all land/see/air crossings within the US the need for passports is going to sky rocket. (Might this be a conspiracy to get drunk co-eds to party in the US, rather than Cancun? One can only hope so.)

Anyhow, should we have an article that'd explain the process to apply for a passport? I'm on the fence about whether or not the scope should be expanded, but I definitely think it'd be useful for those of us with those 'what the **** does that mean?' scenarios. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 05:25, 24 May 2007 (EDT)

I was in line at the post office a few days ago thinking the same thing. I'm curious if the application process is similar in other countries as the U.S. (fees, wait time, etc). Also, it would be great to cover what would happen if I am out of the country and I lose my passport. -- Fastestdogever 10:13, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
An article about passports could be useful, but I'm not sure how much we can generalize about them. Certainly the "how to get one" information is going to vary dramatically by citizenship. - Todd VerBeek 11:11, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
The article should concentrated (and be titled?) to cover only US passports, which are thoroughly byzantine to apply for and have completely ridiculous waiting times. Jpatokal 11:22, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
Agreed about the waiting time, but I've never found the application process particularly byzantine. My renewal last year was quick and (just kidding) easy enough. Or is it getting ridiculous for new applications? In any case, topics such as passport privacy/security (e.g. RFID chips) and what to do if you lose it, are international in scope.
We should make sure to mention that there is no such thing as a World passport [1] — Ravikiran 11:31, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
I would very much appreciate some information regarding how to get a Sealand[2] passport. --Peterfitzgerald Talk 13:14, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
This is cool. I wasn't expecting any support, let alone general support for the idea. So where do we go from here? A generic Passports article? A US-centric article titled US Passports? The current waiting period for an American passport is 14 - 17 weeks, if you don't spring for the additional $60 to get it expedited, which is rather byzantine, especially since you have to send off your birth certificate.
The Germans apparently only need to go to a city hall, tell someone they need one, and... poof... they have one. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 21:12, 27 May 2007 (EDT)
I'd suggest a travel topic article on Passports and visas. US passports are a section. Countries with odd visa requirements (e.g. Saudi Arabia does not have tourist visas, Tibet needs permits, ...) get another section that is mostly one-liners with links. Pashley 00:08, 28 May 2007 (EDT)
But doesn't information about countries with odd visa requirements go in those countries' articles? - Todd VerBeek 13:47, 28 May 2007 (EDT)
Yes, but it can also be covered at a higher level. Middle East, for example, has some info on problems with visas in that region. An overview pointing out potential problems — e.g. citizens of some countries (US, EU, Canada, Oz, NZ, Japan) can go most places without getting a visa in advance, but for other passports (China, India, ...) you need a visa, and anyone needs a visa almost anywhere (except EU-to-EU and a few other special cases) if they want to work — might be useful to many travellers. Pashley 02:17, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
I don't think it makes much sense to have a passport page. Most countries have fairly detailed directions already available on the web, and it seems to be informationally inefficient to have it reproduced here. At best, a link to the passport page would be enough. —The preceding comment was added by Wandering (talk • contribs) .
The US State Department has a lot of information, yes, but if it covered the situations I ran into then I wouldn't have proposed the idea here. By having the information here we can give travelers quick access to information they'd need that the State Department wouldn't be able to give them unless they called NPIC precisely at 06:00. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 19:30, 28 May 2007 (EDT)
It is several months since anyone added to this discussion. It should probably be archived, but where? Is anyone going to plunge forward and start such an article? Pashley 08:21, 18 October 2007 (EDT)
Since the US State department has sorted itself out, and the information and time estimates on their website are now back to mas o menos accurate, and you can call and get a real person on the line any time of the day, this discussion should probably be archived and forgotten.--Wandering 13:56, 18 October 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Site slowdown

Site painfully slow -- saving edit sometimes takes minutes or even times out on Wikitravel.org now. Is this due to increased traffic or something else? Maybe Webby Award traffic? Anything being done to fix this? :-) --Rogerhc 17:04, 25 May 2007 (EDT)

I haven't noticed serious speed problems lately, though of course it's never as fast as it should be. :) The site's traffic stats [3] don't include the past week yet, but I don't see a huge spike since the Webby awards :( so I don't think we can blame any speed problems on that... just on the ongoing increase in traffic (roughly doubling since a year ago). - Todd VerBeek 17:38, 25 May 2007 (EDT)
I've noticed serious performance issues too. We're talking ten to thirty seconds to load a page, like recent changes or editing an article. Jordanmills 20:14, 25 May 2007 (EDT)
I have definitely noticed this problem as well on multiple pcs and internet connections, although I can't say it has taken full minutes to load any pages. On shoddier wireless connections, I time out often for Wikitravel, but not for other sites. --Peterfitzgerald Talk 22:17, 25 May 2007 (EDT)
Yep me too... not painfully slow usually, but I've certainly noticed a fairly big difference in the last few weeks or so. – cacahuate talk 03:56, 26 May 2007 (EDT)
Ok, actually sometimes it's painful – cacahuate talk 02:04, 27 May 2007 (EDT)
Another me too. It can be several seconds to get to the home page. I usually go though my watch list looking at differences, which can also take several seconds per page. - Davidbstanley 04:46, 27 May 2007 (EDT)
I'm in China with a fairly slow connection. The site has usually worked reasonably well for me, but often quite slow. Lately it seems worse, but not by much. Pashley 06:07, 27 May 2007 (EDT)
So, I think there are two issues: one is that we've added Google Analytics code to each page, and I think that's why you get a delay when the page is almost loaded. I'll see if I can make that work better, and if not we can remove it.
I vote for getting rid of Google Analytics. I have noticed pages sticking on that on this and other sites. Davidbstanley 17:03, 29 May 2007 (EDT)
Second, we've got a lot of traffic. Internet Brands has an account with Akamai and we're looking into offloading the work of distributing images and static files (.js, .css) through their very fast caching network. That should probably perk up the response time quite a bit.
After that is in place, we're going to look at throwing some hardware at the site to speed it up. --Evan 12:50, 27 May 2007 (EDT)
I have discovered that throwing a hammer at a server tends not to produce the desired performance improvement. But then, I may not have hit the right spot; optimization is tricky work. - Todd VerBeek 13:00, 27 May 2007 (EDT)

→ shared:Wikitravel Shared:30 May 2007 – cacahuate talk 21:18, 31 May 2007 (EDT)

Site still s l o w ....... is there hope? --Rogerhc 19:20, 2 June 2007 (EDT)

Page saves are still s l o w, 10 seconds slow. Am I the only one? --Rogerhc 02:44, 12 June 2007 (EDT)

Nope, you're not alone... still crawling for me... getting a little annoying... ok, a lot annoying... – cacahuate talk 02:57, 20 June 2007 (EDT)
On the upside, the slow site speed is teaching me to be real proficient at tabbed browsing—I've got 15 tabs going in this window right now! --Peter Talk 03:38, 20 June 2007 (EDT)

I've recently begun to see significant slowdowns, and most of the time the browser status bar indicates it is waiting on files.wikitravel.org, so that subdomain server may be a source of some problems. Assuming that server is serving images, are there any images on the pages without width & height values specified? If the slowdown is lack of images, rather than lack of HTML, adding a width & height tag to all images will allow the page to load even without having downloaded all files. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:37, 23 June 2007 (EDT)

Mediawiki specifies height/width attributes on any images embedded in articles, so that's not what browsers are waiting on. Files.wikitravel.org is being used to store CSS, JavaScript, and image files, which Akamai distributed caching would presumably help. - Todd VerBeek 07:40, 24 June 2007 (EDT)
I don't think it's images in articles that are the problem - as you've indicated Mediawiki handles those properly. However, the "Powered by Mediawiki" image in the footer as well as the "Creative Commons" image both appear to be missing width and height tags - I don't know whether those are a problem or not, but adding width & height shouldn't hurt. -- Ryan • (talk) • 13:26, 24 June 2007 (EDT)
It was something that changed recently (in the last couple months), it hasn't been an ongoing problem... I'm guessing maybe it has to do with Evan's statement above that Google Analytics was added to each page? If that is indeed the problem, I vote for getting rid of it, at least for now until other measures are taken to counteract the slowdown... – cacahuate talk 14:22, 24 June 2007 (EDT)

Let's see how long this edit takes to save... 17 seconds! Ouch! --Rogerhc 19:34, 11 August 2007 (EDT)

Let's see how long this edit takes to save... over 60 seconds! IB, we have a problem. --Rogerhc 13:18, 11 September 2007 (EDT)

Working fine for me today and yesterday? One thing to beware of: if the admins edit the MediaWiki: system messages, the system grinds to a halt for a few minutes as all the caches get purged, but this is just a temporary issue that fixes itself. Jpatokal 22:25, 11 September 2007 (EDT)
I get what Roger describes routinely. This edit took 45 seconds to save for me. That's normal for me for the last couple of months. -- Colin 22:40, 11 September 2007 (EDT)
Very slow at the moment. The main page took 50 seconds to load just now. Sometimes it gets faster after that, but not always. This edit took more than 60 seconds. Davidbstanley 03:00, 27 December 2007 (EST)
The site speed is so bad that it took me a full 20 minutes to navigate to this page and add this complaint. I can no longer perform my routine tasks as a contributor and as an administrator because of this problem, and will simply give up until this is fixed. I'm not sure if a bug report has been filed (I couldn't find one), but it begs the question whether it's even worth doing so, given the abysmal closure rate of bugs. There has been talk of getting new servers in place or something like that, but there's a lot of talk about fixing things on this site and roughly zero action from IB. --Peter Talk 04:38, 22 January 2008 (EST)
I have lately often walked away to go do something else due to the simple fact that WT was just frustratingly slow. Today however it seems to work fine for me --Nick 05:35, 22 January 2008 (EST)
Agreed. There's no site I visit that's consistently as bad as WT, and it's not improving. If said new servers are costly, put ads up and use a portion of those revenues to buy the servers. Keep the rest and throw an IB pizza party. Should work out for all involved. Gorilla Jones 08:15, 22 January 2008 (EST)

[edit] Moving all multilingual coordination to Shared

So, we've currently got lots of pages regarding language versions and policy duplicated between en and Shared. As this is (IMHO) an issue for Shared -- other versions don't concern English, they concern Wikitravel as a whole -- they should be maintained only on Shared. To start with:

Any objections? Jpatokal 04:28, 2 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Image source/license templates

I can't seem to use the {{no source}} and {{no license}} templates for images. These are pretty essential template for a wiki site. Are they called something different in Wikitravel? OoishiMoe 02:07, 4 June 2007 (EDT)

Images should be uploaded to the shared site - see Wikitravel:How to upload files - which has most of the relevant license templates. However, please don't upload images without a license as it will likely have to be deleted in accordance with Wikitravel:Copyleft. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:11, 4 June 2007 (EDT)
Actually any legacy image is CC by-sa 1.0 by default... and most image descriptions make, or at least should make, fairly clear where the image is coming from. Jpatokal 02:38, 4 June 2007 (EDT)
The majority of images here are travel photos uploaded by the person who owns them, so if a user doesn't specify a source, the source is implicitly that user. - Todd VerBeek 08:21, 4 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Car rental extlinks

There have been a rash of car rental links breaking out throughout Wikitravel in the past few days, and it gives me an itchy urge to scratch out a bunch of "rmv extlinks." These are primary links, but it seems more like a corporate race to up google hits by adding "Schmertz" to every article in the United States. Personally, I see no reason to have car rental information any lower than country or top-level region articles (at the lowest). Do we have a policy on this? --Peterfitzgerald Talk 22:47, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Translated item name

In <see, do, eat, etc. > tags, use an alt="" attribute to display a translation of the item name into the local language when appropriate and helpful to travelers. This will appear normal weight, italicized and within parentheses after the bold text item name. Example: see Harbin page.

Can we please include alt="" after the name="" attribute in the click-to-insert snippets of the edit page? Something like this: 

* <see name="" alt="" address="" phone="" email="" fax="" hours="" price="" url=""></see>

Maybe add a note on the edit page bellow or above the click-to-insert snippets explaining what the alt="" attribute will do and also linking to a page about the click-to-insert snippets (or whatever we call them). And what is the something-extra="" attribute for? --Rogerhc 19:20, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

I'm still mulling this over, but I thought I would add that it is a bad idea to render foreign names by default in italics because this can cause problems across alphabets. Cyrillic fonts, in particular, use very different characters in italics, which would make italicized Russian place names, for example, useless to anyone who doesn't speak Russian. But I definitely agree with your basic premise—that listings should give local names, especially when the local signs are in a different alphabet. --Peterfitzgerald Talk 19:28, 11 June 2007 (EDT)
Actually, the alt tag is already implemented so that only Latin scripts (Unicode Ux0000-02FF, or at least that's what I asked Evan to do) are italicized and the rest are left as is. Test:

Test (Test テスト 実験 ижица 조선말).

As you can see, only the Latin word is italicized. Jpatokal 23:36, 11 June 2007 (EDT)
There's also a directions="" tag that can go after "address"... should we consider adding "alt" and "directions" to the template? or is that getting confusing for new editors? – cacahuate talk 01:15, 12 June 2007 (EDT)
Wow, there's a directions="" tag? I never knew that. That would be very usefulj I could have used it at least twice yesterday. And alt="" is a must for attractions with names not in Latin script. It definitely should be documented better. I see your point about it being confusing for new editors though. JimDeLaHunt 13:48, 12 June 2007 (EDT)
I've added the alt and directions tags to the edit tools. Jpatokal 23:30, 13 June 2007 (EDT)
I'm loving the directions tag. Gorilla Jones 23:52, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Currency

The click-to-insert area of the edit page lacks ¥. Are we planning to use ¥ or 元 in English on China pages? --Rogerhc 19:08, 13 June 2007 (EDT) 

Currency: ¢ $ € £ ฿ (baht) 元 CHF Kč kr mk Rs zł

lacks ¥

Good point, I added it – cacahuate talk 22:44, 13 June 2007 (EDT)
Definitely ¥, we're not Chinese (and I've removed the 元 sign). See also Wikitravel:Currency. Jpatokal 23:26, 13 June 2007 (EDT)
I prefer 元 on China pages where it is the local currency. ¥ feels less indigenous, more pretentious to me there. Any reason why we shouldn't simply use the indigenous 元 on China pages? --Rogerhc 17:02, 14 June 2007 (EDT)
Because "元" is not English: we don't use 円 for Japanese yen or บาท　for Thai baht either. ¥ is instantly comprehensible as long as you know that the local currency is the Yuan, whereas 元 isn't and many browsers won't even show it right. Jpatokal 23:28, 14 June 2007 (EDT)
Which browsers wont show 元 right? --Rogerhc 19:34, 17 June 2007 (EDT)
Any browser(/PC) without Chinese fonts installed. Jpatokal 08:09, 18 June 2007 (EDT)
Personally I'd prefer RMB since I can type that and that is what I see most in China, after 元. Howevr, I can live with the current compromise and use "¥". See discussion at Talk:China. Pashley 01:29, 15 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Spam filter... ouch... PLEASE HELP

Someone has put something into the spam filter regex in LocalSettings.php (I think) without first removing all instances of that something from all pages and namespaces of Wikitravel.org. This is bad because it causes the next person who tries to edit a page containing that something to be unable to save his edit, even if his edit has nothing to do with something. The person putting this something into the spam filter regex is in a much better position to remove instances of something from the site because he knows what something is and no one else knows this something. I hate it when this happens. I figure everyone hates it when this happens. Hope this helps. :-) Rogerhc 18:54, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

Wikitravel:Travellers' pub is currently blocked to further edits by something. --Rogerhc 18:56, 17 June 2007 (EDT)
I've reverted recent spam filter changes. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:01, 17 June 2007 (EDT)
Thanks. Maybe a policy of removing instances of something from all Wikitravel pages before putting it into the spam regex would be in order. :-)Rogerhc 19:33, 17 June 2007 (EDT)
Well, I think that goes without saying, but the problem here was a user was attempting to prevent spam, however, as a result, when a page displayed certain numbers in a certain configuration it was automatically blocked. As an example, we were unable to edit the Cincinnati guide because '24 was used in the guide and the user attempted to block the spammer (who would paste seemingly random phone numbers into guides). -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 21:08, 17 June 2007 (EDT)
The Cincinnati problem occurred when I tested something on one of the spammed eight-digit 'phone numbers where the same numbers in the same order appear in the following line of the Cincinnati guide: 28 W. Fourth Street" directions="Downtown, Inside Carew Tower" phone="+1-(513)-241-4104" email= "" fax="" url="http://www.mortons.com" hours="Monday - Saturday 17:30 - 23:00 (bar opens at 16:45); Sunday 1
The spammer doesn't use random numbers, however it does look like he might sometimes be typing his numbers in incorrectly ~ 58.8.1.171 00:03, 18 June 2007 (EDT)

The "problem" with this page was that the Phone number spam section included a list of the spammed 'phone numbers and the associated URL; I've removed them. ~ 58.8.1.171 23:13, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

I'd just like to say that I am seriously considering nominating 58.8.1.171 as an administrator. --Peter Talk 00:42, 18 June 2007 (EDT)
Too bad IPs can't be given any kind of elevated status. That said, I know exactly who 58.8.1.171 is. Unfortunately, his/her IP keeps changing. If I am not mistaken, he/she is residing in Bangkok and has done thousands and thousands of useful edits. If it weren't for the fact that he/she hasn't signed up for an account he/she might be an administrator. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 01:08, 18 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Docent template problem

I can't seem to get the Template:hasDocent to work on the Washington, D.C. article. Does anyone have a clue what is going wrong? --Peter Talk 19:51, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

Hmm. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the page's protection. Perhaps my DC docenthood wasn't meant to be? --Peter Talk 22:01, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

OK, something very odd is going on. Now I can't seem to get the Template:Regionlist to work, although it worked just fine in the past and no new edits have since been made to the template. I tried to use it on the Armenia page, but this happened. All the stranger since it worked just fine a couple days ago when I was working on the Armenia regions and previewed my changes.

Why can't I use templates anymore?! :( --Peter Talk 18:40, 18 June 2007 (EDT)

So, was this ever resolved? --Wandering 22:14, 20 January 2008 (EST)
The regionlist template problem was just a simple mistake on my part, but the DC docent problem was never resolved and remains broken. I brought this up at this tech report, but I never got so much as an acknowledgement that anyone working on bugs even read my report... --Peter Talk 23:14, 20 January 2008 (EST)

[edit] TOC problems

The new TOC design is online for several weeks now. Still there are some severe problems, not only with the layout but also patrolling is bothersome now. As Evan doesnt see to care about these problems maybe we can fix them ourself. Does anybody have an idea which MediaWiki-Extension is used? Are we the only Wiki that uses this kind of TOC? --Flip666 writeme! • 19:24, 19 June 2007 (EDT)

The last thing I want to do is make you think I don't care, Phil. As far as I know, there are two serious problems (the way the ToC shows up with diffs, and the fact that the ToC shows up in the wrong places). I'll make those an immediate priority and work on them tonight. --Evan 21:10, 19 June 2007 (EDT)
I hacked up a temporary solution for the diff problem; let me know if it works OK. --Evan 22:51, 19 June 2007 (EDT)

Looks like what you did worked for diffs, good job! That was an annoying one. I know you've got a lot on your plate but it would be nice to fix the other things people took issue with as well:


    getting the + sign to twist down - the new TOC is still pretty unusable for anything below the top-level sections in Safari

    forcing all sections to stay below the TOC - see how Africa looks in my browser

    getting the "bullets out of the margin", as Todd put it... but if you fix the above problem then I think this would become irrelevant

    move the "contents" heading inside the box, or better yet, remove it altogether

Sorry to keep harping on them, but you haven't really responded to the previous requests, and as far as I know you're the only one that can fix these things  :) – cacahuate talk 00:10, 20 June 2007 (EDT)

The last two items are very low priority, IMO. I don't think sections-below-the-TOC is the best solution; it'd do ugly things to articles with brief intros and longish TOCs (like lots of city articles). Changing the regionlist template so that the left margin can move (do the div tags wrapped around it prevent that?) might be preferable. - Todd VerBeek 07:54, 20 June 2007 (EDT)
Thanks, cacahuate. Let's continue this conversation on shared:Tech:Table of contents makes too much whitespace. --Evan 08:11, 20 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Database dump

The lack of availability of a WT database dump was brought to my attention again today, when people at BeWelcome considered a synergy with Wikitravel. BW is the off-spring of Hospitality Club and CouchSurfing, a free, cooperative hospitality exchange organization. There will be a lot of active members, and the idea is to send them to Wikitravel to work on a travel guide. But the lack of an available database dump is holding this back. Well, anyway.

Check out project:Database dump and find out how we can book some progress here! Guaka 07:38, 21 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Download for offline reading

I will be traveling throught japan soon, and would like to keep a copy of all japan-related articels on my laptop.

How would I do that? I can use wget, but is there a page that lists all japan articles and only those? is there a better way? --Hugo, 123.219.105.180 15:44, 28 June 2007 (EDT)

It's probably not going to be of immediate help to you, but have a look at the Offline Reader Expedition and it's related talk page --NJR_ZA 09:32, 29 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Spanish Wikitravel

Hello, I'm NJM, admin of the Wikitravel:es. I've made some changes in our Main Page, but I haven't been able to do it satisfactory. I need some help because I want to have the two columns placed in paralel, but I don't know very much the wiki language. If someone could gime me a hand, the Spanish comunity will be very grateful. NJM

[edit] Username change request

Is this the place to be renamed on WikiTravel?If so, can someone change my username from Skunkmaster to Skunkmaster IX

Please contact me on my talk page.

Thanks,

Skunkmaster 00:14, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

Usually the requests are made at shared:Requests for username change. But considering that you haven't made any edits yet, just go ahead and create the new account you want, and ignore the old one. – cacahuate talk 00:27, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Italic romanization?

Why are we italicizing romanizations, eg Shanghai (上海 Shànghǎi)? Please reply on Wikitravel talk:Romanization#Italic romanization?. Thanks --Rogerhc 18:34, 16 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Ads

Split pages (IB is pushing to have our guide and star articles split into subpages by section) means lots more page views and lots more ad revenue when ads are finally implemented. How much more? Do you like 200% more, 500% more? Lots.

The community does not want split pages that break our community architecture into ad cubicles.

The community would understand and tolerate discreet non-damaging text ads that don't break our architecture.

The community also understands bad architecture and greed.

Let's have discreet non-damaging text ads now and drop the $ motivated splitting up of our community's great user designed, user written, Webby winning, one-page-per-destination architecture.

Please discuss at http://wikitravel.org/shared/Tech:Optionally_split_long_guides_into_one_page_per_section#Ads before it is too late to prevent the partitioning of our best articles into ad cubicles. --Rogerhc 20:44, 16 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Wikitravel:es has reached more than 1000 articles

Wikitravel:es has reached more than 1000 articles, which is a proud for the Spanish Wikitravel Comunity. Due to that fact, we would like to be included in your Main Page as a version with more than 1000 articles. Many Thanks Nanow jesús madrid 15:22, 19 July 2007 (EDT)

Congratulations! Gorilla Jones 15:30, 19 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Wikivoyeur

I saw a "special page" on this a few days ago. Where did it go? 2old 12:35, 20 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] gastronomic travel: where to start

From my experience, there's almost no information on gastronomic traveling at Wikitravel. What gourmet specialties are in each region? How to find authentic places (or even families) to try it? What are gastronomic regions in each country? What are the subtle differences between specialities in this vs that town/region; between countries?

How much this topic is welcome here? Are there already enthusiasts who are idle for some reasons? Can someone recommend any general books on where to start and how to approach? Should we start with a travel topic, or an expedition, or something else? --DenisYurkin 23:54, 20 July 2007 (EDT)

I make a point of including lots of food info in countries I write about (cf. Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Malawi). The Eat section should at a minimum cover the cuisine and point to areas with distinctive "subcuisines". However, I'm not really sure about how this could be a travel topic -- you can eat good food in any country, yet there's not much in common between a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Paris and the world's best phad thai stand in Bangkok. (Which, for reference, is next to the HSBC building on the south side of Lumpini Park. Open for lunch weekdays only and 29 baht a plate.) Jpatokal 02:41, 21 July 2007 (EDT)
What would we do without you Jani? You crack me up sometimes – cacahuate talk 01:09, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
Does it make sense to create some set of recommendations on what a gastronomically perfect article on a destination should include? Whether as a part of Star requirements (not sure) or as a separate list of requirements which we aim to achieve working on an article on a gastronomic side (which looks more reasonable to me). For example, I feel quite knowledgeable in Russian cuisine, but a blank page syndrome doesn't give me an idea of what specifically I can share with those travelers interested in the subject. --DenisYurkin 14:09, 22 July 2007 (EDT)
> and the world's best phad thai stand in Bangkok
BTW, does the current structure of Wikitravel is good for facts like this? How can wikitraveler find where in the world the best version of (younameit) dish can be found? --DenisYurkin 06:40, 25 July 2007 (EDT)
That's hopelessly subjective information. I think it's the greatest phad thai in the world, but my cousin wasn't quite so impressed by the ambience: it's a concrete shack with only two walls, no air-con and a very open kitchen, facing a major street, and you chow down on your noodles while sitting on little plastic chairs. Jpatokal 22:57, 25 July 2007 (EDT)
I always try to write a good bit on food for an area too. You're probably in good company here. Jordanmills 11:25, 21 July 2007 (EDT)

OK, let me ask a more practical question for a while. What would you recommend to do if I can't find enough info on cuisine and restaurants of a specific country I am heading to? Typically, all I know before my trip is my budget per day and places I will be likely visiting--and I want to get most of my trip in gastronomic sense. I even don't have any specific question to leave on the country's talk page. How would you approach that? --DenisYurkin 14:01, 22 July 2007 (EDT)

I think that info should be in the Eat section for the country. A description of the peculiarities of the food of that country and perhaps a general description of where to find the food. The reader can then drill down into district/city/city district pages for specific recommendations. (That's roughly what I did for Barbados though I cheated by adding a link to my favorite restaurant for Bajan cuisine!)--Wandering 11:53, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
Actually, I meant "how to start understanding local cuisine when there's no info on Wikitravel, and I know nothing on the region's cuisine", not "where to stick what I already have to contribute"-- as I have nothing yet. --DenisYurkin 06:33, 25 July 2007 (EDT)
Uhh... Google? Wikipedia? There are "Cuisine of X" articles for most places in the world there... Jpatokal 22:57, 25 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Ordering of items

(Probably trivial but it bugs me!) Is there a policy on ordering of items in a list? For example, should cities be listed alphabetically, by size, by perceived importance? Should eat/sleep listings be ordered alphabetically? What about things to see and do?--Wandering 16:51, 23 July 2007 (EDT)


    Everything should be listed alphabetically. But if there are lots of things in the list, splitting them up into subgroups is encouraged. Jpatokal 21:49, 23 July 2007 (EDT)
This has been discussed briefly at Wikitravel_talk:Region_article_template#Order_of_cities and at Talk:Mediterranean_Europe#Alphabetic_or_geographic_order.3F. For cities lists, put capitals first, then use alphabetical order. Common practice, it seems, is to just use alphabetical order within all other lists (or their subdivisions, as Jani said). --Peter Talk 22:49, 23 July 2007 (EDT)
Thanks. That makes perfect sense. --Wandering 11:24, 24 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] XXXX (city) for kids

I'd like to start the following articles 'New York City for Kids', 'Paris for Kids', and 'London for Kids' (and, of course, many other places for kids). Is there already a template out there for this? The rough idea I have is something like this:

New York City for Kids (would this be geographically under NYC or would it be a reference from within the NYC article)

Basics

Safety

Food

Hotels

Getting around (tips on subways, taxis, etc.)

See and Do (a list of very kid-specific things to do and see, each annotated by age).

So, is there already a template for this? Or should I just plunge forward!? --Wandering 16:17, 24 July 2007 (EDT)

I don't see any reason you can't use a standard city template. No reason to use "Hotels" and "Food", etc. instead of the typical "Sleep" or "Eat" sections. Just use the big city article template and leave out certain sections that are not applicable for kids, i.e. Talk, Stay in Contact, whatever. Texugo 19:03, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
I'd do them as itineraries. That template includes all but hotels, I'm sure it would be fine to add a 'Sleep' section listing recommended hotels for the purposes of the activities in the itinerary. It may not be the same as what you're thinking about, but there's a very good Charlotte with children itinerary. Gorilla Jones 19:23, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
Sounds to me like a new and useful class of itinerary. Can we get a consistent naming convention, though? "XXXX with children", "XXXX for kids", or even "XXXX for families", but pick one and use it consistently. I mildly prefer the first because it seems more general. Also, I don't think it needs to be limited to cities. I can see someone doing "France with children" or "Southern California with children". Pashley 21:23, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
Since there is a Charlotte with Children, perhaps that is the best way to go (thanks for the heads up Gorilla Jones). I think a Myanmar with Children is something I'd like to do as well. However, my next question is how is one supposed to find this. I don't see a link from Charlotte to Charlotte with Children. Is there some accepted way of linking related travel topics to an article?--Wandering 21:52, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
It's near the bottom of the Charlotte article. Itineraries usually go at the top of the 'See' section, where they get more exposure. (There's also a page that lists all of our itineraries by region.) I note, though, that Charlotte with children is listed as a travel topic, not an itinerary. Which should it be? I prefer it as an itinerary.
A travel topic may be more suitable. My understanding of an itinerary is that it outlines a sequence that the traveler should (or must) follow. XXXX with Children will be more like a list. --Wandering 10:09, 25 July 2007 (EDT)
In any event, I agree that this would be a useful class of article, "XXXX with children" is a good nomenclature, and am very curious to see what Myanmar with children will look like! Gorilla Jones 22:28, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
One could possible also add a {{related|XXXX with children}} to the main article page. --NJR_ZA 03:10, 25 July 2007 (EDT)
To itinerary or to traveltopic? I say travel topic, just because it's easier to write and lets the traveler decide the order of things. But I have detected some vague hostility from many Wikitravelers towards travel topics that I'd like to understand better. --Peter Talk 03:44, 25 July 2007 (EDT)

I've started a New York City with Children, as yet an orphan. Feedback and organizational suggestions welcome.--Wandering 16:46, 25 July 2007 (EDT)

Looks good so far. I think you could drop 'Get in', unless getting to New York with kids is significantly different than getting there by yourself. (As for 'Drink', I think the official Wikitravel policy on kids and booze is next on the agenda after the lao lao debate.) Gorilla Jones 23:42, 25 July 2007 (EDT)
Links put in Travelling with families. But with only two articles, and despite apparent consensus above, we already have inconsistent names! Charlotte with children and New York City with Children, without/with a capital on "children". I think the former is preferable. Anyone object to moving the New York one? Pashley 09:43, 26 July 2007 (EDT)
None from the uppercase guy. --Wandering 21:08, 26 July 2007 (EDT)

I like it!! Please add Washington D.C. with children to your list of things to do. 2old 13:27, 27 July 2007 (EDT)

If anyone makes Chechnya with children, I'll just be amazed. Euphemism 11:08, 13 January 2008 (EST)

[edit] Wikitravel:es appears on the news

In case you're able to understand the Spanish language, I guess you'll love to read the piece of news that a very important newspaper in Spain El País has published this moorning. Please, visit the Spanish Portada and clik in to the link to the article. Nanow jesús madrid 06:50, 26 July 2007 (EDT)

Direct link: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/Wikiviajeros/elpeputec/20070726elpcibpor_1/Tes
Pero para guías viajeras, Wikitravel. Nada mejor que los consejos de quienes han viajado para saber cómo realizar el viaje, qué es lo que hay que ver, cuánto cuesta comer, dormir, entrar en un museo o tomar un café. Los escritores especializados en viajes siempre han sido los encargados de facilitar esa información. Ahora, los wikiviajeros comparten sus conocimientos y experiencias a través de Internet.
Looks really good! Positive tone and no mistakes as far as I can see. Jpatokal 07:18, 26 July 2007 (EDT)
Congratulations! That looks like some of the most high profile publicity for Wikitravel (and certainly for Jesús) that I have seen—and it is overwhelmingly positive! --Peter Talk 13:21, 27 July 2007 (EDT)
Hey, congratulations! Lot's of good news about Es lately! – cacahuate talk 00:45, 28 July 2007 (EDT)

Just to update here: Since these two articles came out last week, we have seen a huge increase of traffic to es:. Over 600 new registered users and a lot of anonymous edits as well. We can hardly keep up with the welcome messages! Texugo 23:48, 29 July 2007 (EDT)

In the torrent of new edits on :es, I saw at least one comment saying that the contributor found out about Wikitravel after hearing about it on the television—has there been even more fantastic press recently in Spain? --Peter Talk 01:27, 30 July 2007 (EDT)
Yes, a local station did a story about it after seeing it in the newspaper. NJM told me he's going put the coverage on YouTube so we can watch it. Texugo 03:06, 30 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Goals and commercial policy

Could a commercial section be introduced? It seems illogical to exclude resources that many individuals would find invaluable purely, it would seem, on the basis of their commercial status. For example see User:Accommodationdirect many people would find this service really useful but it can't be referenced adhering to policy guidelines. If a commercial section was to be added Wikitravellers could make their own decisions about content they wished to view and I'm sure some would find this helpful.

It's good to know that User:Accommodationdirect is taking a pro-User:Accommodationdirect stance. I have composed a sonnet on the rare, fragile beauty of the internet hotel booking engine, wounded by the external links policy it cannot understand. Gorilla Jones 07:35, 27 July 2007 (EDT)
Ladies & Gentlemen, without further ado... Gorilla Jones, in A minor... – cacahuate talk 00:13, 28 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Using dates in guides to clarify when something has been reviewed/noted/stated.

Couldn't find anything about this but I'm sure it's been asked... Not all areas are covered and necessarily up to date. When traveling to a country that has a history of civil unrest it would be particularly useful to know when the author that is giving the information got it time wise. "Was it last month or last year that the government started really cracking down on bribes?" Is there a preferred/acceptable way to be able to put in dates that things have been confirmed in the articles or is just looking at the article history the only way? Thoughts on this in general too! :) Jordan 17:29, 1 August 2007 (EDT)

Time-sensitive information can and should be tagged with disclaimers like "As of June 2007". Jpatokal 22:17, 1 August 2007 (EDT)
But not "This hotel was reviewed in June 2007." Gorilla Jones 22:38, 1 August 2007 (EDT)
Why not, by the way? --DenisYurkin 07:15, 2 August 2007 (EDT)
I believe that the original reason why not was that date stamps would fill up our lists with ugly non-travel-related information. But I have been thinking, couldn't we include date stamps in the listings templates? We could format the templates so that the date stamp only shows up when you are editing, not when you are just reading the guide. I wouldn't want to make date stamps mandatory, but I think that they would be useful—there is a reason why this keeps coming up. --Peter Talk 12:20, 2 August 2007 (EDT)
A collection of reviews of hotels and restaurants, written separately by individual reviewers, could have date stamps. This isn't that. The date stamps would still clutter the guides and make the signal-to-noise ratio worse. And if we're putting dates on restaurant and hotel reviews, why shouldn't we be doing it for museums and parks? Why shouldn't we be doing it for public transportation and basically every bit of the article for the exact same reason? (And suddenly we're Wikipedia with thousands of those stupid 'fact' tags, except ours are 'date' tags.) Once they're in there, nobody updates them. When I overhauled the Hanoi guide earlier this year, there were several "This information current as of 2005" lines. What better way to show readers that we're not an up-to-date travel guide?
Say I visit a city using Wikitravel's guide. I go to Major Museum X and have a nice time as the guide said I would. Why would I think to log on to Wikitravel and change the date of the listing to indicate that it's still current, when nothing else needs to be updated? Of course I wouldn't. So, after four years, we have a listing for Major Museum X, which has a date that's several years old, and we have New Minor Museum Z, which has a date that's less than a year old because it's not very interesting and nobody bothered to add it until now. As a reader, I am led to believe by the date stamps that I should have more confidence in the listing for New Minor Museum Z than Major Museum X. And in that way I've been misled by my Wikitravel guide. Gorilla Jones 13:46, 2 August 2007 (EDT)
I think we should save it to some kind of "policy FAQ: why we are not changing this or that". --DenisYurkin 16:26, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Obihiro original author credit

Hi. I started this article yesterday, transferring it from my user page. To my surprise another editor - who put in a pair of parentheses and a section head - was then credited as the originator of the article at the foot of the page ('Based on work by Wikitravel user(s) WindHorse'). I've written to the editor about this - also to Peter who suggested taking it up here. Is it some kind of bug? After all the page history clearly shows who started the page. Any ideas? Thanks. -- Kleinzach 22:07, 1 August 2007 (EDT)

Nope, no bug. You're still credited as the original author. The reason WindHorse's name shows up last was because the last person to edit a page gets attributed at the beginning.. Look at the bottom of this page. Currently, it says: This page was last modified 21:38:28, 2007-08-01 by Marc Heiden. Based on work by Jani Patokallio,..., but as soon as I edit and save the changes I made to this page it will read: This page was last modified 21:38:28, 2007-08-01 by Andrew Haggard. Based on work by Mark Heiden, Jani Patokallio,. -- Sapphire