Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub

Welcome to the pub

Shortcuts:
WV:Pub
WV:TP

The travellers' pub is for general discussion on Wikivoyage, and the place to ask questions when you're confused, lost, afraid, tired, annoyed, thoughtful, or helpful. To start a new topic, click the "Add topic" tab, so that it gets added at the bottom of the page, and sign your post by appending four tildes (~~~~)

Before asking a question or making a comment:

• Have a look at our Help, FAQ and Policies pages.
• If you are a new user and you have any questions about using the website, try the Arrivals lounge.
• If you have a question or suggestion about a particular article, use the article's talk page to keep the discussion associated with that article.
• If you'd like to draw attention to a comment to get feedback from other Wikivoyagers, try Requests for comment.
• If you are wanting travel advice on a specific matter see the tourist office.
• If you have an issue you need to bring to the attention of an administrator, try Vandalism in progress.
• If you are having a problem that you think has to do with the MediaWiki software, please post that on Phabricator instead.
• If you want to celebrate a significant contribution to Wikivoyage by yourself or others, hold a party at Celebrate a contribution.
• Discuss issues related to more than one language version of Wikivoyage in the Wikivoyage Lounge on Meta.
• Anything that is Nigeria-related is now meant to go in the Nigeria café instead. Anything that is Kosovo or Albania related is now meant to go in the Kosovo and Albania café instead. This includes announcements, initiatives, celebrations, and issues with certain articles.

You can review old Pub discussions in the Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub/Archives.

Pull up a chair and join in the conversation!

Click here to start a new thread

Significant problems with the listing editor

I've noticed two new, significant bugs in the listing editor. If I edit a listing and don't add latitude and longitude coordinates, it automatically saves the incorrect coordinates 0, 0. And it adds an unnecessary period (full stop) to the end of the description. Examples: . Has there been a recent change that created these bugs? —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:24, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Hey all. The listing editor should now be fixed for the adding period and coordinates bugs.

The beta has a potential fix for Wikidata sync. If you use it, please enable the beta mode and let me know if it's working for you!

Thanks in advance! Jdlrobson (talk) 02:20, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the problem started within the past 24 hours – I don't see evidence of it in edits from before that. —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:31, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

I've rolled back for now. But i really really really need some beta testers for the beta version of the gadget as the existing gadget will completely break in the next week due to some upstream changes in the software and we need to make this change in the next 7 days. This version has been available beta since January so bugs shouldnt be occurring at this stage.

Any volunteers for helping me test it and reporting bugs like this? Jdlrobson (talk) 06:05, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I can't speak for the former issue, but the full stop/period issue is something I've known for quite a while – I thought it was the standard, but I may indeed be wrong (and will appreciate if that "feature" was removed). --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 09:51, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

It hasn't been adding the period for me. For hours etc., the template adds periods, but the editor doesn't, and for content (as in the examples), it's up to you to add it. If the editor is to help with that, it should at least check whether the last (non-blank) character already is a period. –LPfi (talk) 10:04, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson: Thanks. For some reason, the beta version wasn't on my radar until now. I've just enabled it. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:03, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

While we're on the topic, I'm finding that the "Sync shared fields to/from Wikidata" doesn't seem to work in either version of the editor. When I click the link, nothing happens. I'm using Firefox on a Mac. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:11, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm hoping to have a look at this by the end of the week. I'll make sure the "." is no longer added and will investigate the coordinates issue.

Just to check I fully understand, are these bugs present in both the beta and the normal version or just the beta? Jdlrobson (talk) 02:10, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

They seem to be present in both versions. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:01, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

I can confirm that "Sync shared fields to/from Wikidata" is also broken on my side (desktop, Firefox browser). OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 15:58, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata sync doesn't work for me either. --Renek78 (talk) 21:38, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

The beta has a potential fix for Wikidata sync. If you use it, please enable the beta mode and let me know if it's working for you! Thanks in advance! Jdlrobson (talk) 02:21, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the periods and coordinates! I'm using the beta version, and I'll try syncing with Wikidata next time I have an opportunity. —Granger (talk · contribs) 02:38, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi Jdlrobson, Wikidata syncing seems to be working in beta mode. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:33, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Okay I'm going to sync the two versions now! Thanks for letting me know! Jdlrobson (talk) 16:15, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

There’s another problem now. For some reason, whenever I add a new listing using the listing editor, the listing appears at the top of the article instead of in the section I was trying to put it in (see my recent edits on Tangshan). STW932 (talk) 16:20, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

I’ve also noticed that nothing seems to happen when I press the ‘edit’ button for individual listings. Is anyone else experiencing that problem? STW932 (talk) 16:38, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Are you using Vector classic, Monobook, Timeless or Modern skin by any chance? Jdlrobson (talk) 20:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

(and if so.. could you see if the bug occurs in Vector 2022? There was an upstream change to MediaWiki that I want to rule out as the source of this bug!) Thanks in advance! Jdlrobson (talk) 20:42, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

(It should hopefully be fixed now if that was the use case!) Jdlrobson (talk) 21:14, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

I’m not actually familiar with any of those skins. I’m just using whatever the default settings happen to be on my Safari browser. But the problem is now fixed. Thank you. STW932 (talk) 07:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @Jdlrobson: During my demonstration in today's Toronto meetup, I wasn't able to demonstrate "sync shared fields to/from Wikidata" button in the listing editor to new WV users. It appears to be broken again. On the other hand, the "quick fetch" produced the pop-up box which tells me that the code is partially working. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:22, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson: The "sync shared fields to/from Wikidata" is still broken when I tried today. It's now more than 3 months since this functionality was broken. When will this be fixed? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 14:28, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes I'm aware. Sorry! If this breakage is leading to bad edits, I can hide the link in the mean time if that's helpful?

I am oversubscribed with things to do in the Wikimedia-universe and am currently recovering from a personal injury so my time is short right now. Just keeping the thing functional while the MediaWiki platform evolves has been more work than I expected and I've been prioritizing my time for essential "keep the lights on work". Since I didn't create the original version, understanding how it is supposed to work and writing tests to describe its behaviour is a big time sink that I need to do before I can even fix it. In the past changes I've made more hastily have broken other things so I prefer this model of working.

I am tracking this in https://github.com/jdlrobson/Gadget-Workshop/issues/4 and will post updates there when I do work on this. If someone who is technical wants to have a go at fixing this I'll happily support them, otherwise this will need to wait until I have the time. FWIW if someone is better placed to maintain this better then me, I'll also happily pass over maintainer responsibility to that person.

I'm truly sorry this is disrupting your on-wiki workflow and am sorry I don't have more positive news.

(Please note, I keep this gadget maintained in my volunteer capacity not as WMF staff in case that wasn't clear). Jdlrobson (talk) 00:04, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. I hope you feel better soon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

i had a brief look at this. I made a tiny bit of progress but the behaviour of clicking sync wikidata seems to wipe out commons and wikipedia data when you hit save. I am guessing that is not the correct behaviour but the code seems to do just that.. so I am a bit confused? Can someone confirm what the behaviour of wikidata sync should be with respect to other fields? Jdlrobson (talk) 02:15, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't remember what the existing behavior was, but in my opinion clicking "Sync Wikidata" should not automatically overwrite the "image" field if it's already populated. It often makes sense for us to use a different image from the one on Wikidata, to show a more appealing or traveller-oriented side of a POI. I guess I would say the Wikipedia field shouldn't be overwritten either, though I'm not sure about that because it's hard for me to think of a situation where it would make sense to have Wikidata and Wikipedia fields that don't match. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:01, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson, I confirm you that is correct to remove Wikipedia and Commons information, when Wikidata instance is provided, because previous two information are collected dynamically. This prevent broken link, when the wp/c source are renamed. Andyrom75 (talk) 10:30, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Okay I've pushed what I have to the beta version. Let me know if it's working as expected or not. Jdlrobson (talk) 16:17, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Video

Hey All, We at Wiki Project Med have build a tool to create short clips zooming into specific locations in the world, as part of our VideoWiki effort. Not sure if some folks here have an interest in creation videos. Here is an example of one of the videos made with this tool. Additionally we are having a meeting about video at Wikimania 2024. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

We have generally thought that videos are too difficult to make well for them to be useful here. For me, I think a video zooming in on a map is less useful than the dynamic map centred on the location, where I can zoom in (and out) at my own pace. Also the tuberculosis video linked as example would work better for me as just audio: I had difficulty following the speech while something was happening in the animation.

People differ, of course, and one doesn't need to play a video just because there is a link. It would be good to see examples where the videos really are worthwhile for at least some people.

–LPfi (talk) 12:58, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I think one of the big difficulties with videos is providing for a wiki friendly way of editing them. If we have a text guide to a city, it is easy for any editor to make a small change to say that the museum now is closed on Wednesday, but it is much harder to do that with a video without the edit sticking out (different voice?). It is hard to provide an easy way to insert the extra or replacement words at exactly the correct moment. If I look at a city guide, it is not immediately obvious whether I am looking at the work of 3 editors over 1 month or 30 editors over 15 years, but unless there are really great tools to support co-operative editing a video updated by 30 editors will be far too jumpy. How will other editors review changes to see that touts haven't plugged their wares without re-watching the video?

Very short videos may be useful for some instructional matters, to explain things that are hard to put into to words - maybe how to eat with chopsticks, or open an unusual train door. AlasdairW (talk) 20:41, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

The videos are compiled with text to speech. Thus one can change a single word and easily create a new version. VideoWiki basically allows easy collaborative video editing within a mediawiki. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:19, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I find that video size is the Kryptonite of any videos. Compress the file size too much and the video becomes too blurry to be useful. Keep the video high quality and it takes a long time to buffer (sometimes won't even load in remote places). OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 15:02, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting results

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hello everyone,

After carefully tallying both individual and affiliate votes, the Charter Electoral Commission is pleased to announce the final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter voting.  

As communicated by the Charter Electoral Commission, we reached the quorum for both Affiliate and individual votes by the time the vote closed on July 9, 23:59 UTC. We thank all 2,451 individuals and 129 Affiliate representatives who voted in the ratification process. Your votes and comments are invaluable for the future steps in Movement Strategy.

The final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting held between 25 June and 9 July 2024 are as follows:

Individual vote:

Out of 2,451 individuals who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 2,446 have been accepted as valid votes. Among these, 1,710 voted “yes”; 623 voted “no”; and 113 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 73.30% voted to approve the Charter (1710/2333), while 26.70% voted to reject the Charter (623/2333).

Affiliates vote:

Out of 129 Affiliates designated voters who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 129 votes are confirmed as valid votes. Among these, 93 voted “yes”; 18 voted “no”; and 18 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 83.78% voted to approve the Charter (93/111), while 16.22% voted to reject the Charter (18/111).

Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation:

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted not to ratify the proposed Charter during their special Board meeting on July 8, 2024. The Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Nataliia Tymkiv, shared the result of the vote, the resolution, meeting minutes and proposed next steps.  

With this, the Wikimedia Movement Charter in its current revision is not ratified.

We thank you for your participation in this important moment in our movement’s governance.

The Charter Electoral Commission,

Abhinav619, Borschts, Iwuala Lucy, Tochiprecious, Der-Wir-Ing

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

It's error time

Anybody else getting this error repeatedly for more or less any action on this website?

MediaWiki internal error.

Original exception: [93545f3b-e9b4-4b54-a4c5-4e3e72ec05d7] 2024-07-19 00:27:09: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"

Exception caught inside exception handler.

Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.

Brycehughes (talk) 00:30, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Servers I think were down just then – I believe that everything's back up now. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 01:03, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Crowdstrike?? Brycehughes (talk) 11:44, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't think so – Crowdstrike happened much later in the day whereas this outage happened around midnight UTC. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 11:57, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough. I went to bed on the above error and woke up to the Crowdstrike error, so was confused about the timelines :) Brycehughes (talk) 12:04, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, diff story for me where I was awake when both outages happened :/. SHB2000 (t | c | m) 13:09, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Usually, when you get that error, you want to wait five minutes and try again. Most (but not all) of these clear up within a couple of minutes on their own, as automated systems detect and route around the fault. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:54, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I've gotten the error on the last 2 edits I made. Oddly enough, when I reloaded the page the change ''was'' made, but it doesn't show up on the Recent changes log. Weird.

I'll take your advice and wait 5 minutes before drying another edit. ~~~!~ Mrkstvns (talk) 01:31, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah it's happening a lot these days. Brycehughes (talk) 21:09, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Getting rid of the huge city language

I think this is what it would take to get rid of the confusing "huge city" language.

• Page moves
  • Rename Template:Hugecity skeleton to Template:High-content destination and update language in it (from "PAGENAME is a huge city with several district articles" to "PAGENAME is a destination with several district articles").
  • Rename Wikivoyage:Huge city article template to Wikivoyage:High-content destination template and update language in it.
  • Rename Wikivoyage:Quick huge city article template to Wikivoyage:Quick high-content destination article template
  • Rename Category:Huge city articles to Category:High-content destination articles
  • Rename Category:Huge cities with multi-tier district hierarchy to Category:High-content destinations with multi-tier district hierarchy
  • Rename Category:Huge cities with more than 10 districts to Category:High-content destinations with more than 10 districts
  • Change the cats in Template:PrintDistricts to the new names
• Simple copyediting (mostly, you just replace the words "huge city" with "high-content destination" or "article divided into districts" or the equivalent)
  • Update language in Wikivoyage:Where you can stick it
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:Article skeleton templates, especially Wikivoyage:Article skeleton templates#What's the difference between a small, big and huge city?
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:What is an article?
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:District article template
  • Update language and link in Wikivoyage:Plunge forward
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:Template index
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy
  • Update language in Wikivoyage:Article skeleton templates/Sections
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:Policies#Structure of travel guide articles
  • Update language in Category:Move listings to districts
  • Update language in Category:Articles needing the Geo zoom defined
• Templates
  • Update language and link in Template:Movetodistrict
  • Update language and documentation for Template:PrintDistricts

• More complicated editing
  • Update Wikivoyage:District Expedition, including the PetScan links
  • Update language, link, and PetScan link in Category:Cities with categories

This all sounds feasible to me. Shall we do this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:21, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

No. Mrkstvns (talk) 18:08, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's not worth the trouble, either. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:18, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't love the fact that "high-content destination" sounds unidiomatic and a bit of a mouthful to say. It's still feasible, though. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 04:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Agree, high-content destination sounds even more confusing than huge city. Gizza ^(roam) 04:44, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

"Districted article" is purely descriptive, so shouldn't garner the sense of protection that the current naming has, and is easy to understand. "Districted city" was a suggestion I previously made. Regardless of the name, we at least need to specify that any destination can have districts if it has enough "See" content. The size of the city, population, etc are irrelevant in districtification. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:22, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

That would also work. The list of changes that need to be made are the same no matter what the eventual name is. I'm not sure what's involved in moving the cats, but everything else is something I could do. It'd probably take about an hour. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:38, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

"Districted article" is OK, but when you say "any destination can have districts if it has enough 'See' content": yes, if by "destination" we are referring only to bottom-level articles in the breadcrumb structure. We don't want to use districts for region articles, state/province articles, etc. I guess that would just be made clear in the longer writeup about the template, as is the case now. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Template:Districtedcity skeleton would seem to be the simplest, clearest solution. Then it won't be used accidentally for regions. Ground Zero (talk) 21:41, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

That name is OK for me too (not only for the skeleton though). However, the problem on when to use a region and when a districted city remains, and the associated conflict about whether something that isn't strictly a city, or doesn't look like one, can still use districts. –LPfi (talk) 07:46, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Would Multidistrictcity be slightly clearer? Martinvl (talk) 17:30, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I like "multi-district", but if we use the word "city" in here, we are going to have more discussions over whether _____ is a True™ City. Please look right up at the top of the page, where the question isn't whether the area has districts; the dispute is specifically over whether the destination is actually a city.

If you say, "Sure, WhatamIdoing, I know that, and in the future, I actually want to should have lots of discussions about whether it's okay to use this format for places that benefit from having districts but are not legally or practically considered 'cities', because I just love it when people worry about whether this is the right invisible thing to say", then that's fine, but I personally don't want to have any more of these conversations. I'd like to solve both the "Buffalo isn't huge, even though we have a huge amount of content for it" and the "This collection of small towns isn't technically 'a city', even though we've split it into districts" problems. Do you really want to preserve the latter problem? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

How about Conurbation or Metropolitan Area? Martinvl (talk) 21:10, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Far too broad. The Buffalo-Niagara Falls metro area (as just one example) comprises Niagara County, Northtowns, Buffalo, and Southtowns. Powers ^(talk) 23:29, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

I assume moving the categories (without redirect) like any page and changing the categorisation in the templates would be enough for moving the categories. Can somebody confirm? The cache updates might take some time. –LPfi (talk) 20:29, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I believe so, but I may be wrong. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 23:31, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's my understanding, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Just want to remind you that there doesn't seem to be consensus for doing this at all, so how much work it would take or how it should be done is a moot point. Mrkstvns (talk) 18:11, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't matter if there's consensus or not, we need to know it's technically feasible to do so. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 21:32, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Yep, it's good to know that bad ideas can be easily implemented. Mrkstvns (talk) 21:40, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Which part do you think is the bad idea? Your comment above suggests that you are concerned that a reader will stumble into the Template: namespace and be confused if {{hugecity skeleton}} has a different name. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:12, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

When should Wikivoyage articles acknowledge sources, or be acknowledged as a source?

Wikivoyage does not have the elaborate reference system of Wikipedia. Itineraries such as walking tours tend to be based on travel literature, as well as guided tours. I started the Haunted Stockholm tour inspired by a book on the topic, with stories paraphrased from other sources, and added waypoints absent from the book to avoid suspicions of plagiarism; the article also acknowledges the book. I was recently on a tour hosted by the Jewish Museum, which added plenty of information for the Jewish Stockholm tour and bought a map useful to expand on the Stockholm labour tour; however I am not sure how to give the proper acknowledgements. Even if we don't violate copyright, we should consider how to be a complement for the hospitality industry, and not a rival. On the other hand, some commercial tours seem to be based on Wikivoyage. This tour guide might have read parts of the Stockholm history tour article; though the gallery shows off some locations absent from this article. Do we need a policy for giving and requesting acknowledgements? /Yvwv (talk) 21:08, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Cannabis

We can talk about it now

With cannabis being legalized in numerous states in the US as well as all of Canada, Germany, Israel, etc, is it perhaps high time to have a specific template and subsections in relevant articles? It can be done already with {{buy}} or {{drink}} (see Homer#Cannabis for an example) but maybe we should just lightly modify one of those for cannabis? Just Step Sideways (talk) 18:42, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

As a general rule, the English Wikivoyage tries to have as few specialized templates as possible. If the existing templates feel too specific, then the generic {{listing}} can be used instead. I would suggest that whatever is already used for tobacconists would be a reasonable option. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:51, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Wycsi has advice on this. It recommends "the Buy section of the City for dispensaries, or the Drink section of the City page for shops that sell for consumption on premises; the Buy or Drink section of the Region or Country page for an overview of such shops". That seems reasonable to me. I don't see the need for a new template. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:02, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

I do not think this needs a template. Some articles may need more info on cannabis, though.

Retiring_abroad/Table used to have columns for the legal status of activities some retirees might indulge in -- cannabis, homosexuality & prostitution -- but those were removed, See Talk:Retiring_abroad/Table#Drugs_and_sex; I think I was the only one who wanted to keep them. Pashley (talk) 15:47, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

In some jurisdictions, the law on cannabis (and also the way in which the law is applied) seems to change quite regularly. Unless WikiVoyage can keep up to date with what is happening, it is best not to give, what some readers might percieve as "legal" advice. —The preceding comment was added by Martinvl (talk • contribs)

Any article that mentions cannabis or similar substances should comment on the legal risks or link to an article that does, usually a country or province article or Cannabis. The unstable situation should be noted in the warning. I think a link is much easier than a template, and the template should anyway mostly be the link, perhaps with a very general warning.

The main thing to warn about is that travelling away from a place were cannabis can be legally bought or consumed can land you in trouble, such as when traces are enough to be a problem, or when travelling between two states where it is legal involves federal law that forbids it.

–LPfi (talk) 06:19, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

I take the point about not needing a template, we can let that lie.

There are certainly legal risks. For example, it is legal nationwide in Canada, but you can't bring it in even if you are coming from a US state where it is also legal. The US is its own issue due to the patchwork of laws across individual states. You can buy in Colorado, but you better not bring it into Utah.

However, I'm not sure about the unstable situations mentioned above. In the places I've been, once it is legal, that's it, although public consumption is against the law pretty much everywhere. (which is a joke in the age of vapes,edibles,drinkables,etc, but whatever)

I think the best we can do is state that what is legal in one place may be wildly illegal in another. Just Step Sideways (talk) 01:27, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Public consumption is perfectly legal in New York City. You can smoke pot anywhere where it's legal to smoke cigarettes. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:42, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Vote now to fill vacancies of the first U4C

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Dear all,

I am writing to you to let you know the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now through August 10, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C,

RamzyM (WMF) 02:47, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Roll out of Parsoid Read Views on English Wikivoyage this week

Hello everyone! I am glad to inform you that as part of our continued rollout of Parsoid Read Views, Parsoid is expected to be turned on this week as the default read views renderer on English and Hebrew Wikivoyage. Here's the rationale behind our confidence to roll-out this experimental feature and collect feedback.

This is an opportunity for continued experimentation as we increase the number of wikis using Parsoid for read views.

If this disrupts your workflow, don’t worry you can still opt out through a user preference or turn Parsoid off on the page you’re navigating in the Tools submenu, as described at the Extension:ParserMigration page.

To report bugs and issues, please look at our known issues documentation and if you found a new bug please create a phab ticket and tag the Content Transform Team in Phabricator.

There is more information about our roll-out strategy available.

Best regards, C. Scott Ananian for the Content Transform Team. CAnanian (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Parsoid is cool. It underlies this dumb website (doesn't earn me any money, I haven't bothered marketing, don't freak out) and works really well. Brycehughes (talk) 03:00, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Is it somehow more self-contained alternative to https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/master/includes/parser/Parser.php , or what? Interesting that it started as JS, but got converted to PHP back again... full circle :-) -- andree 15:38, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

It began as an independent wikitext parser which generated HTML with additional information in it to support Visual Editor and users like @Brycehughes which want to extract information from the HTML. Maintaining two parsers in parallel is a waste of effort, though, so we're trying to (eventually) completely replace the old Parser.php with parsoid. Cscott (talk) 17:56, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem sensitive to sections. Click "Add listing" in any section and it *always* creates a generic listing entry whereas it previously knew to make listings "eat", "see" or whatever. So far, this parsoid looks to me like a step backwards. So what are its benefits? Mrkstvns (talk) 22:42, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

God I wish for once the WM tech team would test a Wikivoyage workflow before deploying. Brycehughes (talk) 22:55, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson: I recall you fixed this bug (generic new listings instead of section-aware listings) a few weeks ago, but I can confirm it seems to be back now, in both the regular and beta listing editors. Do you have any insight? —Granger (talk · contribs) 03:03, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

There should be a fix in the beta as of now. Jdlrobson (talk) 04:50, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

They rarely do – we're always an afterthought. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 04:09, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

TBF, en.wv has 1000x less of everything (edits, views, editors) than en.wp... basically it's on par with minor language editions of WP, and there is 100 of them. I expect most of them too have similar strange details? Quite a nightmare to test, I imagine. -- andree 12:50, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

No matter how big or small a wiki is, it's never a good idea to just roll it out site-wide without testing to see if it works. That's a bit like Apple saying they'll roll out iOS 17 automatically on all devices, but they won't test it on the SE Gen 3 because it's one of their least used models. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 12:56, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

I suppose there is no need to test (thoroughly) on each project: our issues are Wikivoyage-specific, Wikiversity may have their problems, right-to-left and composed-character languages have theirs. I'd assume that few small wikis have much of wiki-specific features; I assume that if you test on sv-wp, most would-be issues on da-wp and no-wp would be found, even those of e.g. fi-wp. The Wikivoyages having many features of their own should be well-known. –LPfi (talk) 13:49, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Iam not show what an alternative would look like? Rolling out to logged in users with an opt out seems like exactly the right way to do this.

The fact that these issues werent caught beforehand is on us the community. There were emails on wikitech-l about opting it to this previously that we didnt act on. We have had months to flag these issues already. What am I missing? Jdlrobson (talk) 19:02, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

As I understand it, they did test it beforehand. That's how they knew there was only a .3% variation in text alignment between the two parsers. Powers ^(talk) 19:58, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Special:Version says we're still on last week's software. How certain are we that we're casting blame in the right direction? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Hey can you check the beta version of the gadge (opt in via gadget preferences)? This bug should only impact the current stable version. I need more testing before promoting it to everyone. The listing editor icons will say add listing (beta) when you are using the beta.

Changes like this are welcome as they force editors to test things :) Jdlrobson (talk) 18:59, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson: Looks like it's fixed in the beta version. Thank you! —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:14, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

The full page map, from the icon at the top right of the page (next "Rendered with Parsoid"), is no longer working. The link seems to be missing the co-ordinates (set by the Geo template at the bottom of the article text), and so is showing a map of the sea at 0,0. I assume that this is a consequence of the change, but I don't know exactly when it stopped working as I only use it a few times per month. AlasdairW (talk) 17:41, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Whoops, indeed, that's not great, and most probably a consequence of this change. I'll have a look (although it may take a bit more time due to Wikimania this week!). Thanks for reporting! IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 08:38, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

This is the same issue as https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T348722, so we'll track it there. IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Seems to have a bad "auto corrector" in the editor. It introduces far more errors than it fixes. Doesn't even know about common tags....wants to change "lastedit=" to "lasted it=", Does stupid things like capitalizing the word "budget" when used as the 2nd word in a sentence. Lots more bad "corrections" but I'm too lazy to type 'em all in. Is there a way to set a preference to always shut it off? Mrkstvns (talk) 19:41, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that this issue is related to this change. Could it be a local setting? I don't *think* we have auto-correction in the editor (but I may be missing something!) IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 08:41, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

There's no autocorrection in any MediaWiki editing environment. The Editing team has been declining those requests for over a decade. Any autocorrection you're seeing is happening in your web browser. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

There is a preference to turn it off: In the Editing tab of Preferences, it is at the bottom in Developer tools. AlasdairW (talk) 22:34, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-developertools is the direct link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:32, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Share examples of WikiProjects or collaborations that you have worked on

Hi Wikimedians!

The Campaigns Product and Programs Teams at the Wikimedia Foundation wants to learn more about WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations work. We would like to do more work that improves the quality of collaborations onwiki. We especially need examples of WikiProjects and other collaborations that have worked on different Wikimedia projects. Please help us by filling out a short survey on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Campaigns/WikiProjects

Never participated in a WikiProject or other collaborations, but have ideas on how we could make collaboration better? You can also share feedback on the talk page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Campaigns/WikiProjects

Please share the survey with anyone you think would help us have valuable insights, we are particularly looking for successful collaborations on non-English wikis. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Astinson (WMF) Wikivoyage Spanish could participate? they did not publish anything on our Posada... --Hispano76 (talk) 21:55, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes! We are looking for examples from any of the wikis, we are working with translators to share the call to action, but you will see the form is translate already, @Hispano76 Astinson (WMF) (talk) 00:38, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

In just a few hours, I'll be filling out the form! I do want to share that I was a bit disappointed not to have been contacted after offering my expertise during the WikiForHumanRights conversation.

On a brighter note, to keep things organized on enwikivoyage, how about we compile a list of activities that have taken place between our communities, like Wikivoyage 5 and Wikivoyage 10? It would be great to see us bring together Wikivoyage 12 and make it a regular event! Galahad (sasageyo!)^(esvoy) 06:40, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

switch to interactive map does not work

I just discovered that the link "switch to interactive map" of a Regionlist does not show a map, and the static map disappears. FredTC (talk) 11:12, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

On it:voy still works (e.g. it:Slovacchia), so the problem is only in en:voy. Unfortunately I'm about to go on vacation and I can't debugging it in the short term. The problem is on the new parser (Parsoid), because if you switch on the legacy parser (see link on the left bar), everything works correctly. Andyrom75 (talk) 15:44, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson: Could you perhaps take a look into this when you get the time? Thanks in advance. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 23:16, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I can replicate this, but I'm not familiar with this gadget. What is the gadget that adds that link? Jdlrobson (talk) 02:14, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Regionlist&diff=prev&oldid=4073000 ... it's basically using the mw-collapsible , which in turn does some jQuery magic to switch stuff... -- andree 10:46, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @FredTC - could you provide an example of a page where this happens, so that we can investigate and fix? Thanks! IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 15:58, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

@IHurbainPalatin (WMF) Slovakia... Andyrom75 (talk) 21:23, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I noticed it with Amsterdam, but I also tried other ones with the same result. I also tried it with another browser, not logged in. All with the same result. FredTC (talk) 06:37, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

After investigation: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Collapsible_elements#With_custom_toggle_link uses "id" attributes to have remote/custom toggles on elements. This is not going to work out in a Parsoid environment, because the id will be overwritten. Please bear with us while we figure out how we're going to support that! IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 10:58, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I opened https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T371682 to track this. IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 11:07, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

From our perspective, this should be fixed with the following edit on the Regionlist template: https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?oldid=4826574&diff=4915944

(I've added it there as well: Template talk:Regionlist#Parsoid compatibility)

I thought that Parsoid was always overwrite the id attribute of the elements, but it was pointed out to me that it only happens if the ID is not unique. Hence, de-duplicating the ID should do the trick. IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 15:16, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@IHurbainPalatin (WMF), it's good to hear from you again. You should be able to edit that template directly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:11, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing likewise! Let me try that, then (I didn't want to overstep boundaries :D ) IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't think this community has ever objected to someone fixing known bugs. ;-) We are practical here (and one of the nicest editing communities out there. Volunteer-you should drop by and update an article or two again). I'd have implement your change myself, except that I hadn't tried to reproduce the bug, so I wasn't sure that I'd be able to test that it was fixed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I went ahead and edited the template. I believe the issue is fixed. Let me know if there's anything that doesn't look right! Thank you for your report and your patience :) IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Reminder! Vote closing soon to fill vacancies of the first U4C

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Dear all,

The voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is closing soon. It is open through 10 August 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility. If you are eligible to vote and have not voted in this special election, it is important that you vote now.

Why should you vote? The U4C is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community input into the committee membership is critical to the success of the UCoC.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C,

-- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Content translation

Hey All We are looking at the possibility of launching Content Translation to work between languages of WikiVoyage. What this would mean is that one could use this tool to translate WikiVoyage articles between EN and DE or DE to EN or another other language pairs for that matter. There is the possibility to have this work supported by an initial machine translation layer but the requirement for humans to make a certain amount of improvements. Thoughts or concerns? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:22, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't support allowing machine-translated listings or sections to be put verbatim on any language version of Wikivoyage. I just think that's a very bad practice. As machine translation improves, maybe someday it will be OK, but the authors have to be credited and it's really better for a thinking person to not only translate but also make decisions about whether edits are needed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:59, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

I would strongly support it. Even on voy/de our community is very active but still too small. Even me, I often start with an en:import. I think have a tool like that could lower the barrier to start new articles, especially in an less active Wikivoyage language version. It would be not limited to de, even Polish Wikivoyager could use German articles to have it translated and start. -- DerFussi 10:40, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Yah allowing machine translation without improvement is definitely not something I would support either. Thankfully the tool doesn’t permit this. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:28, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

I've used it for Wikipedia articles, and I think it's helpful. The percentage of necessary revision to a machine translation is configurable per language pair, as some machine translations are better than others. You might want 5% changed, on average, for Spanish to English, but 15% for German to English.

In my experience, it's easiest to translate into a language you know very well. People who write well in English don't dump bad translations into the mainspace just because The Computer™ said that was good grammar. Problems with this can usually be resolved with a short partial block to force a discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

For the record, a similar request has been made at m:Community Wishlist/Wishes/ContentTranslation work for Wikivoyage/en (original request is in Spanish). --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 10:59, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

It's not obvious what this adds, because even with existing tools, translation of most languages is speedy and not a bottleneck to editing. What takes time is engaging brain to produce coherent content. For instance, the North African desert does not have such good skiing as google-translated W/WV-DE would have you believe - Piste in this context means a dirt track. Grahamsands (talk) 20:42, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

At htwiki, I'm cleaning up machine translations that were apparently accomplished through this method:

• Open French Wikipedia article.
• Copy raw wikitext into Google Translate.
• Paste unedited Google Translate results, including mangled wikitext codes, non-existent parameter names, and translated file names, into the Haitian Creole Wikipedia.

The ContentTranslation tool doesn't screw up the wikitext. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:46, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

@Grahamsands: Nobody said that using the ContentTranslation tool even with machine translation meant you stopped doing copyedits. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 05:33, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

What I'm afraid of is the translation tool allowing a workflow where the brain is disengaged. The 15% (or whatever) limit avoids this for most users, but some may come up with strategies to get enough changes without improving anything.

There is no guarantee that those using the tool have a good enough command of English to avoid problems, neither with grammar, nor with facts. We can have a discussion with established users, and block them if need be, but we might have short-term accounts do problematic translations. I simply do not trust unknown users to behave sensibly with such tools.

On the other hand, I don't have experience with using the tool for Wikivoyage articles, it might work well with the typically less complicated text here (and it might have improved since I tried it at sv-wp). What's the experience of new users using the tool at Wikipedias? –LPfi (talk) 09:20, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken some wikis require extendedconfirmed permission to use the Content Translation tool – in our case, we could make that autopatroller and sysop. This would make it clear that the tool is primarily for trusted users and using it is a privilege. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 10:07, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

That would probably solve the main issues. –LPfi (talk) 11:17, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Worries like "some may come up with strategies to get enough changes without improving anything" are not grounded in facts. It's pure speculation. It's obvious that you "simply do not trust unknown users", but we could equally say that "There is no guarantee that those using" the existing system can write in English well, and newbies screw up all day long, at all wikis, everywhere. It's part of the learning curve.

I think the situation breaks down like this:

• Old system: Newbies make mistakes, newbies mangle formatting, newbies use machine translation without any minimum requirements or even reminders to check the results. Sometimes we have to clean up the mess, or delete the page, or block them.
• Proposed system: Newbies will make mistakes, but they'll be less likely to mangle formatting. Newbies will use machine translation, but there will be minimum requirements and reminders to check the results. Still, sometimes – though probably less often – we will have to clean up the mess, or delete the page, or block them.

Which of these two systems do you want? Remember that the one in which nobody uses machine translation, nobody writes in their second (or third) language, and only people who are fully competent in both technical and language terms get to contribute isn't what we have now, and it won't be what we have then, either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Might be that you are right, but I don't think it is a far-fetched a-priori thought that a tool for machine translation increases the usage of machine translation. –LPfi (talk) 17:30, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

I know that machine translation is a valuable tool in hands that know how to use it. In those cases, the result shouldn't be easily distinguishable from skilful manual translation. We also have users that use machine translation to produce low-quality text and even rubbish. I don't think it is common enough to be a problem. I don't know whether this tool will increase such usage to a point where it is a problem. Personally, I have tried the tool a few times at Wikipedia and found it hard to use as intended (e.g. changing the paragraph structure wasn't supported). It might work better for Wikivoyage. –LPfi (talk) 17:38, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

One of the classic stories about poor translation is that in the early days of machine translation, somebody entered the text "The spirit was willing but the flesh weak" into an English to Russian translator. The resulting Russian was translated back to English and dave "The vodka was good but the meat was bad". This is an extreme example, but I often use the Google English to Afrikaans translator, mainly to get the correct vocabulary. I invariably have to change something. I therefore counsel that machine translators should be used with care. Martinvl (talk) 19:58, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

At the very least when it's trialled, it should only be for autopatrollers and sysops, LPfi's concerns are pretty much why many wikis require EC (typically 30 days + 500 edits on many Wikipedias) to use this tool. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 21:58, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

For sure and those limits can be set at WikiVoyage aswell. We could also set it up for functioning from EN WV to other languages of WV if EN does not wish to have it functional to here. But before I assign this work to a programmer will need consensus from at least a few communities. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:21, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

I'd probably want to restrict it to autopatrollers, at least at first. Anyone who wants to use the tool can request autopatroller status and be granted it at the discretion of an admin. The documentation on the tool should state that clearly. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:46, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

CX can also be turned on without machine translation (obvious problem, seen at other wikis: people just copy/paste paragraphs into Google Translate without any requirement for revision), so that we get only the formatting and attribution benefits, without the translation benefits (e.g., they'll link to the disambiguation page Auburn instead of automatically connecting to Auburn (Alabama)).

I understand that it's also possible to choose specific language pairs for translation (e.g., from Spanish to English, but not from German to English). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:05, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

We could allow autoconfirmed users to do that (formatting and attribution benefits, without the translation benefits). Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:49, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

@SHB2000, does your "many wikis" mean "the English Wikipedia only"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:55, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

FYI: 52 Unexpected Places to Go in the USA

https://www.afar.com/magazine/incredible-places-to-visit-in-the-u-s

Sadly, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the United States Virgin Islands were excluded. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:01, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, those aren't really states and people living in the lower 48 would have to book a long, and very expensive, flight to get to those places. As a traveler in the USA, I prefer the article's focus on places that *really are* in the USA. Mrkstvns (talk) 16:49, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

They're not states, but to fly to Hawaii from anywhere is long and expensive. I think the Virgin Islands are a lot closer to Florida and quite a few other states than Hawaii is to California. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:37, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Listing editor issue in Emeryville

I'm finding that when I click the "add listing" button in any section of the Emeryville article except "Get in", I get an error message: "Error occurred loading content for this section." I haven't seen this issue in any other articles. This problem happens with both the regular and beta versions of the listing editor. Does anyone know what the problem might be? @IHurbainPalatin (WMF), Jdlrobson: Pinging in case you have any insight. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:48, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

I'll have a look, thanks for reporting! IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 08:52, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, this is an matter of discrepancy in some cases between section numbering in Parsoid and in core (where the API trying to get the section content lives). We have a couple of issues related to that in Phabricator already; I'll try to have that triaged to the correct one. IHurbainPalatin (WMF) (talk) 12:57, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T372387

The failure of the listing editor is the result of a severe software bug. The section numbering differs from that of non-Parsoid renderer. The wrong numbering results in getting wrong section texts, and in many cases the listing template is not found. To get an idea please go to the "Get in" section and after this to "By bus". Then the message "Cannot find section" will occur. I added a Phabricator task with high priority. --RolandUnger (talk) 10:37, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

The Wikitext was invalid, so the parser returned a wrong result. The old parser is much more error-resistant. --RolandUnger (talk) 10:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for finding that. I wonder, is there a way to produce a list of all articles that have invalid wikitext like this, so we can go through and fix them all? —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:26, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

By grepping all the articles, actually only Emeryville seems to have this particular typo. You could probably render all pages with and without Parsoid, and diff the result html's... good luck with that :)) -- andree 07:29, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

It's possible that the WMF could add it to Special:LintErrors. (I don't know what the minimum requirements are for including something in that system.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

I've had listings end up in the lead for years (example). I wonder if that's related at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:03, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

FYI: When the Best Possible Story is Right Outside Your Door

https://lithub.com/when-the-best-possible-story-is-right-outside-your-door/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:38, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Following the Stockholm labour tour and Lidingö history tour, the undersigned has considered writing the Lidingö diplomatic tour of embassy buildings causing turmoil these days. /Yvwv (talk) 22:32, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Coming soon: A new sub-referencing feature – try it!

Hello. For many years, community members have requested an easy way to re-use references with different details. Now, a MediaWiki solution is coming: The new sub-referencing feature will work for wikitext and Visual Editor and will enhance the existing reference system. You can continue to use different ways of referencing, but you will probably encounter sub-references in articles written by other users. More information on the project page.

We want your feedback to make sure this feature works well for you:

• Please try the current state of development on beta wiki and let us know what you think.
• Sign up here to get updates and/or invites to participate in user research activities.

Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team is planning to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year. We will reach out to creators/maintainers of tools and templates related to references beforehand.

Please help us spread the message. --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 10:36, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

This is irrelevant for this wiki, since we don't use refs, but if you also edit at Wikipedia or other wikis using footnotes, this might be useful to know about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out! We are aware that most wikivoyage language versions don't use refs, but some do according to our research (e.g. ruwikivoyage) do and the feature can technically be used on all projects, that's why we decided to notify this community as well. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 13:10, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Interface administrator inactivity requirements

Just bumping the discussion at Wikivoyage talk:Interface administrators on inactive interface admins. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 08:27, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Sign up for the language community meeting on August 30th, 15:00 UTC

Hi all,

The next language community meeting is scheduled in a few weeks—on August 30th at 15:00 UTC. If you're interested in joining, you can sign up on this wiki page.

This participant-driven meeting will focus on sharing language-specific updates related to various projects, discussing technical issues related to language wikis, and working together to find possible solutions. For example, in the last meeting, topics included the Language Converter, the state of language research, updates on the Incubator conversations, and technical challenges around external links not working with special characters on Bengali sites.

Do you have any ideas for topics to share technical updates or discuss challenges? Please add agenda items to the document here and reach out to ssethi(__AT__)wikimedia.org. We look forward to your participation!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:20, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Croptool

Hey guys, I use croptool to correctly size pagebanner images. Unfortunately, connections have been consistently failing the last couple days. Anyone seen this? Any tips on what I might need to do to get it to work? Mrkstvns (talk) 15:38, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I suggest asking at c:Commons:Village pump/Technical. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll post there and see if I get a useful reply. Mrkstvns (talk) 21:14, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I believe it's a known issue (many others have the same issue), though don't quote me on that. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 21:26, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

My understanding is that the tool has been largely the work of one developer or a small team and that person may have stopped updating it. However, the problem has been intermittent so far and I've still been able to crop photos for WP using the tool. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 03:05, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

"Intermittent" seems an apt description. The tool is connecting properly again and I was able to get some edits done on pagebanners. Got my fingers crossed that it keeps working because it's pretty useful, IMHO. Mrkstvns (talk) 14:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

I was using WikiShootMe!, another toolforge-hosted tools, this past weekend and it also had issues (mainly with loading the page). I suspect it's toolforge-related and not the tool itself. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:03, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Commons bot that should warn us about photos nominated for deletion is not working

It's important for you all to know about this! See c:Commons:Village pump/Technical#Bot no longer working to warn Wikivoyage about nominations for deletion? It would appear that the only solution at this point is for one of us to monitor c:Commons:Deletion requests at all times. It's a big job, and this is a big problem, because it's a return to the status quo ante, when we had a slew of thumbnails emptied without any notice. I became aware of the problem due to this deletion. I've resumed looking at deletion requests, starting with the earliest date that still has open deletion requests, and I've gotten up to c:Commons:Deletion requests/2024/07/14, but it's a huge job and not one I'll be able to do by myself. If there are other volunteers, maybe we should create an Expedition, so as to keep each other up to date on which days of deletion requests we have already looked through. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:18, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh gosh, not a repeat of 2021 again. A bot for this would be very nice; what exactly happened to it? --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 01:25, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

This is linked from the thread. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:29, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal, is your team working on that Phab task? It's marked as high priority, but nobody's assigned to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:51, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm very sorry for the extremely long delay in reviving this bot! The engineer who wrote it left the Foundation years ago, so we were at a lost when it died last year. Anyway I think at this point there's only a few issues left. I will see what I can get done this week. Thanks for the ping. — MusikAnimal ^talk 19:40, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Super! Thank you very much. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:19, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! That is very much appreciated, MusikAnimal :-). --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 22:32, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Announcing the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

Original message at wikimedia-l. You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

The scrutineers have finished reviewing the vote and the Elections Committee have certified the results for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) special election.

I am pleased to announce the following individual as regional members of the U4C, who will fulfill a term until 15 June 2026:

• North America (USA and Canada)
  • Ajraddatz

The following seats were not filled during this special election:

• Latin America and Caribbean
• Central and East Europe (CEE)
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• South Asia
• The four remaining Community-At-Large seats

Thank you again to everyone who participated in this process and much appreciation to the candidates for your leadership and dedication to the Wikimedia movement and community.

Over the next few weeks, the U4C will begin meeting and planning the 2024-25 year in supporting the implementation and review of the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines. You can follow their work on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the U4C and the Elections Committee,

RamzyM (WMF) 14:07, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Have your say: Vote for the 2024 Board of Trustees!

Hello all,

The voting period for the 2024 Board of Trustees election is now open. There are twelve (12) candidates running for four (4) seats on the Board.

Learn more about the candidates by reading their statements and their answers to community questions.

When you are ready, go to the SecurePoll voting page to vote. The vote is open from September 3rd at 00:00 UTC to September 17th at 23:59 UTC.

To check your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.

Best regards,

The Elections Committee and Board Selection Working Group

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:15, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

RamzyM (WMF), if you send these mass messages with a five tilde signature (~~~~~), then they won't be signed by the MassMessage bot. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:24, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi WhatamIdoing, thanks for the ping -- glad to see you here :) I am aware of the five-tilde option, and this signature was as intended. Best, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 13:47, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

FYI: The Greatest Road Hotels in America

https://www.wildsam.com/stories/best-road-hotels-in-america-motor-lodges

As an American, these are definitely the sort of place you foreigners want to stay if you come here to visit and want an authentic Americana-style experience. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:14, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

This would make up a great travel topic, provided that we respect copyright. As in Haunted Stockholm tour, a compilation article based on a main source should have text written from scratch, as well as omitting some entries from the source, adding entries absent from the source. /Yvwv (talk) 22:07, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Transnitria again

We have a repeat visitor to this page who, I believe, is pushing an agenda, using hyperbolic language. The issue has been discussed on the talk page, but they are trying to impose their agenda on the article. I do not wish to edit war with them, so I would like the views of others. Please see this edit. Ground Zero (talk) 11:53, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I have started (yet another) discussion on the article' talk page here. Ground Zero (talk) 12:43, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Listing Editor and Wikidata

@Jdlrobson, in this listing, if I click directly on "Uniforma le informazioni con Wikidata", I got a JS error, but if I click first on "inserimento rapido", the previous link works, showing that there's no need to update anything (obvious behavior, since the second link already aligned all the information between voy and wd). Anything to be fixed? Andyrom75 (talk) 16:29, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

https://github.com/jdlrobson/Gadget-Workshop/issues/4 Jdlrobson (talk) 18:25, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

FYI: The Most Sought-After Travel Guide Is a Google Doc

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/google-docs-are-the-ideal-travel-guides —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:36, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

FYI: Selfies taken in desirable locations makes people less likely to go there, study finds

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/04/nx-s1-5090013/selfies-taken-in-desirable-locations-makes-people-less-like-to-go-there-study-finds

Just another good reason to not use social media. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:08, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

This feels a little like the home-selling advice about hiding all the family photos. You don't want people to think this is your house. You want them to be able to imagine themselves in it. Perhaps a photo of "me at the beach" similarly keeps people from being able to imagine themselves in that location. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:06, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I would like to read the study itself, or a real report on it. Most key info is missing from the NPR article. Was it an academic study or just a bit of asking around?

If you are going to propose to somebody, you don't want to do that like a friend of yours, whose proposal they probably have heard or will hear about. That's quite obvious – and very different from your wondering where to go for your holiday and seeing an influencer posing in Shangri-la.

–LPfi (talk) 09:00, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, the actual "study" (which the article frames around one woman asking her friends and family if they'd propose at the same spot in the same location as she did) definitely doesn't conclude that selfies or seeing people in photos makes people less likely to visit. If her friends had not seen the photos but just heard about her proposal, I don't think they'd be any more eager to "steal" her proposal. I think most people would not want to steal their friend's proposal.

The article, and perhaps the study itself, doesn't acknowledge that selfies and pictures can be taken and seen by people you don't know or any of the obvious reasons someone might not "steal" a friend's trip other than the fact that their eyes saw a photo with a person in it. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:25, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

The study is at https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucad059

I think this thing about wanting a unique proposal is not universal. For some people/cultures, doing it like everyone else means doing it "correctly". If everyone else goes to a fancy restaurant, or overlooking a waterfall, or in Lover's Lane, or whatever, then you want to do that, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Yes. I suppose the point here is that "everybody" in Western cultures does it in a "special" way, which means you cannot just copy what somebody else did. Doing it in Paris or in the yard of Juliet works, but only if somebody close didn't do so recently.

(Most, of course, would not splurge on that journey, and then need to frame it more or less without such clichés – if they even want live up to the "special" expectation.)

–LPfi (talk) 17:35, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I can see this being the case, especially if certain social media sites like IG/TT are fueling overtourism in certain locations. At least that's often a deterrent for me. SHB2000 (t | c | m) 23:40, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

That makes me think that there will be differential effects. One person will feel deterred, and another might think "It looks like they had such a nice time, and they look like me/we seem to like similar things/I identify with them in some way, so maybe I'll go there someday, too". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:07, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Return of travel blogs?

Reading How I Added Maps to my Travel Posts, I was reminded that one of the features of Wikitravel when it was first founded was travel blog-style posts by users was a feature of the site. It was phased out and eventually deleted there and never ported over here, but has there been a community discussion about this, including bringing it back or how it could be made useful here? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:58, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Attn:admins

I guess none of you look at Wikivoyage talk:Vandalism in progress regularly without prompting. If you don't, please add it to your watch list. In the meantime, I would appreciate it if you all, and particularly the technically savvy folks among you, would look at the latest thread on that page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:35, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Guyana Georgetown embassies contact info

Some of the email addresses in the contact info of embassies on this page look suspicious. Page link here:

Georgetown (Guyana) 220.135.129.168 03:10, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I assume that you mean those of solutions2000 and the hotmail address. The new user User:Krd removed them (with no edit summary), but also the other email addresses, which I see no reason to be suspicious about. I restored the latter. Somebody should perhaps check. –LPfi (talk) 13:35, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

@Krd: why did you remove them? Some of them like [email protected] or [email protected] are from government urls. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 13:52, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

The Negro Motorist's Green Book

Hi, I write about black issues and I'd like to create a page on here for the best locations for black travelers.

My username is based on The Negro Motorist's Green Book, a book published in the first half of the 20th Century that helped black people find welcoming environments for travel.

I would like to create an article by that title to help black people find environments where they feel welcome and safe. The Negro Motorist Green Book (talk) 03:35, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

https://negromotoristgreenbook.si.edu/ The Negro Motorist Green Book (talk) 03:36, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Great! Glad you're here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:28, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I second this. Looking forward to it! SHB2000 (t | c | m) 05:10, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

@NatGertler: A bit of a longshot, but you're active on our sister projects and it's possible that you may want to collaborate here on this topic. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:56, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I have at least looked at this discussion. I'm no travel expert. (For those looking on, Justin tagged me because I publish the facsimile editions of original Green Book volumes that you can purchase at the gift shops of museums and historic sites.) But I'll be glad to answer things if I can help. -- NatGertler (talk) 23:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

We wouldn't normally have an article on The Negro Motorist's Green Book (or any other travel guide).

A more typical thing to do would be to add points of interest to city articles, or to expand descriptions to mention relevant facts. For example, Detroit/Downtown needs an entry on the historically important Black church, the Second Baptist Church https://www.secondbaptistdetroit.org/. You can decide whether you think it fits better under Detroit/Downtown#Architecture or in a Wikivoyage:Where you can stick it#Cope section.

Many cities need descriptions that mention that a recommended business is Black-owned, or a new entry for a decent place to get a good haircut.

A third way to contribute is to create Wikivoyage:Itineraries. If there are businesses that were listed in The Negro Motorist's Green Book that still exist, and they would make a reasonable trip (e.g., stay at this 80-year-old Black-owned motel, have breakfast at this 90-year-old Black-owned restaurant across the street, etc.), then an itinerary that follows the old routes across a state or through a region might be very interesting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I like the idea of an article, but I am not sure about the name. I saw the 2018 film Green Book and I think we should keep the Green Book title free for either an article based on the original books, or an itinerary following the film journey. The term green book may not be well understood outside the US, and those who don't know of the books may not like some words in the title.

I assume the article will mainly be about general travel advice for black travellers, and that specific details will go in destination articles. Will the advice be applicable worldwide or just in the US? Will it only appeal to motorists, or is public transit in scope? AlasdairW (talk) 22:49, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Just as a quick note, the term ''Green Book'' may be reasonably understood outside the US because of the feature film, which [https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt6966692/?ref_=bo_se_r_1 grossed] $85 million in the US but $237 mill outside of the country. -- NatGertler (talk) 23:22, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

In the interim, I've added a pagebanner for now – is there any way we can get italic text on page banners? --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 23:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I have attempted to add it to several pages (e.g. Breaking Bad and Mission: Impossible), but it doesn't work. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:08, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh well – I guess we'll have to live with it for now. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 00:15, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I think there's no problem with a travel guide themed around a historic guidebook that is no longer updated, and that it's in fact a great idea. I also don't think there's a problem with using the historic title. Similarly, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People proudly maintains its historic name and offends no-one by so doing. All that said, we could discuss on the article's talk page whether to change the title to The Black Motorist's Green Book. I think that would be a bit of a falsification and anachronism, but I wouldn't lose sleep over it if that were the consensus pick. In the meantime, the article needs actual content! Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:04, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Ikan, it seems that if you talk to a generation or two younger than us, it appears that many of them think that "Negro" is actual "the N-word". This is apparently common enough that if school teachers who are teaching historic texts (like Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech) feel it necessary to explain this point.

(Also: Hooray for a world in which some kids have never heard that racial slur.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:28, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Why can't I undelete these two files?

User:মোহাম্মদ মারুফ/common.js and User:মোহাম্মদ মারুফ/Gadget-ListingEditor.js. I am able to create and delete a test document as a subpage of Wikivoyage:Graffiti wall easily, but in these cases, when I get to View deleted pages, clicking "view/undelete" has no effect at all. What's going on? For background, see User talk:মোহাম্মদ মারুফ. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:35, 18 September 2024 (UTC)