Talk:Boating on the Baltic Sea

Sailing or broader scope
I think most of what will be told in this article is relevant also for motor yachts. Should the name be changed (yachting in Finland?). Much is relevant also for those using smaller boats, canoes and kayaks, but I think these need a separate article, pointing here (and to Hiking in the Nordic countries) for some information. --LPfi (talk) 07:27, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Started Boating in Sweden, intended to include all kinds of leisure craft. /Yvwv (talk) 11:03, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Links moved from "Useful links" section
Per external links, there cannot be an "External links" section in any article (regardless of its name), so I'm moving these links here in case they can be moved to a place in the article that's more in keeping with site policy.


 * https://raja.fi - Border Official information
 * http://www.guestharbours.fi

Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:35, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Specific pages at raja.fi are linked from Get in, and guestharbours.fi from more or less all destination sections. No need for mentioning them elsewhere. --LPfi (talk) 07:47, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Listings
There are event listings for some cities. Sailing events and the prime reasons to visit the destinations should be mentioned in prose, but I think the listings themselves should be only in the city articles. There is much else to be told. --LPfi (talk) 13:26, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

One article covering the Nordic countries?
Much of the advice in this article applies to Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Climate, the topography and culture are in most cases similar. Should this article be moved to Sailing in the Nordic countries or Boating in the Nordic countries, with some location-specific advice inserted? (Knowing that a guest harbor in Finland is more likely to have a sauna than one in Denmark, can be interesting, but not vital.) /Yvwv (talk) 11:18, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think one article may be enough, especially if destinations are kept in separate articles (like Archipelago Sea and Saimaa already have). Norway does have a different topography and tides, while I suppose the Saimaa complex is quite different from anything elsewhere, but the latter can be handled in Saimaa and a note on deep fjords and a section on tidal currents in Norway would not dominate the article. Differences (such as chart symbols for cardinal marks) can also be handled in a context suitable for, say, a German sailing via the Swedish coast to Turku. One could also consider covering the Baltic Sea (and Kattegat) in one article and leaving Norway out. Anyway I think we should hear what Jukeboksi has to say. --LPfi (talk) 13:05, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't have a strong opinion one way or an another about where Sailing in Finland belongs to, maybe Sailing the Baltic Sea or Boating on the Baltic Sea but on the whole "what goes where and where not and where to manually replicate item?"-circus this travel guide effort is now will much be solved if specialized software that is able to access semantical data so that each item is entered once but can be displayed in various ways in various places depending on what the user's preferences are. With SPARQL based system you could ask things like I describe here and give much more reach to each item and simplicity in maintaining and forming sets of items. Kind of User:LPfi to ask for my input since I have been wiki structure designer (pro-bono) for 13 years I may have some view to these questions. Jukeboksi (talk) 16:00, 6 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I now moved the article to Boating in the Baltic Sea (oops, I see I did not use the suggested title) and added material on the rest of the Baltic Sea. I removed minor parts that I did not know how to easily integrate (new context should be added). Quite a lot more has to be written and some stuff on Finland should be moved to city articles and the like.


 * It should still be quite easy to revert the move if it seems unlikely the southern parts of the Baltic are going to be covered.


 * --LPfi (talk) 10:46, 10 May 2016 (UTC)


 * User:LPfi I think the move to a larger context is a good call on this one. The gripes: Technically you boat _on_ a body of water. If you go _in_ the Baltic Sea then you some kind of submarine and have been watching too much Das Boot or Hunt for the Red October.. No joo splitting hairs aside. There are some issues I notice. Maybe we should for logical continuity use the Baltic Sea coast clockwise used here and then toss in the inland waterways where-ever they are accessible from the Baltic Sea. The boater ain't gonna be zooming from coast to coast even where in the bays it'd theoretically be possible. So the plan would be to go like starting Denmark, then up the coast of Sweden, down and east the coast of Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia again, Poland and Germany. Surely people can see that if coming to Denmark then also the German archipelago is of interest if generally going north-eastward. Åland and Archipelago sea are Finland so prlly should treat them under == Boating in Finland == . This would allow natural internal quick access linking in the style of using notation Denmark  Sweden etc. Great job. I have some nice locations I have nice memories of sailing in Estonia so I'll prlly add those Jukeboksi (talk) 21:43, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
 * User:LPfi also acknowledging that you seem to know a whole lot more about the subject matter than I. I honestly don't have much to add content-wise but will try to help in the task of arranging content so it is convenient to both readers and editors. Jukeboksi (talk) 21:46, 11 May 2016 (UTC)


 * OK, we are not catering for the submarines :-) I tried to mostly follow the clockwise scheme, and having it go by country is mostly logical, but requires some tweaking (now mostly done). Some of the regions, such as the Stockholm-Åland-Turunmaa archipelagos could be described together, but to keep the logic have to be separated by country, with repeating some stuff. The Finnish waterways are now in south-east to north order, starting with Saimaa, which is contrary to the coasts, but probably OK (not many are going up the Kokemäki or Oulu river). --LPfi (talk) 09:13, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * The "story" that we are sailing the coast of the Baltic Sea clockwise, starting from the most likely point of entry for the relevant audience is a logical thing to do and is to trying to keep both readers and editors happy (or at least brainsane) with the arrangement of the content if possible. Jukeboksi (talk) 12:42, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

What about Boating in Sweden?
Should this be merged and redirected here or does it haver enough to stand on its own? Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:07, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Now that the decision has been taken to talk about pleasure crafting the Baltic Sea in a single article which I think is a reasonable scope I'd defina.. I will move to merge these. Jukeboksi (talk) 14:13, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

We should probably get a template that says "X is part of Boating on the Baltic Sea"
But in general to rid us of no-good "ghost town with tumbleweed rolling by"-articles like West Estonia and Islands, North Estonia and East Estonia are atm, not quite local and not quite national and nearly no content and if any content will be added it will more likely belong in the local entity article and/or the Estonia article. The way to go is Semantic Wikivoyage where existing data drives improvement of arbitrary articles by utilization of full automation. Jukeboksi (talk) 20:29, 12 May 2016 (UTC) Updated Jukeboksi (talk) 20:34, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Empty or half empty region articles are indeed a problem, but I am not quite sure I understand your proposed solution... Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:15, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Anyway, I think we should not create nor redlink such articles until there is enough substance here. The articles you point to are probably necessary for the regional hierarchy of Estonia, not "parts of Boating on the Baltic Sea". When a section here is sufficiently developed we could move the bulk to a Boating in West Estonia and the like, but until then it is better to primarily link to destinations proper relevant for boaters. The region articles should not be overloaded with info for boaters, and should include much information on the inland, irrelevant for most boaters (what general info to include in the region articles is a separate discussion, not relevant here).


 * And I still think we should cover the cities very briefly here. A one-liner is mostly enough, unless the city is significant for somebody not interested in its attractions (such as Kiel or Stockholm, for the Kiel Canal and Mälaren, respectively). The attractions, and even the marinas, should be found in the city article. There are enough general things to say about the coast stretches to make this article very long.


 * --LPfi (talk) 09:19, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Stockholm Venice of the North?
Stockholm as competing with Saint Petersburg was added. Is that a serious claim? It is true that Stockholm has much water, but it has no network of canals, and I think islands with street connections nearly can be counted on one hand. I do not doubt that some over-zeelous PR firm claims the title for Stockholm, but is it something we should endorse? --LPfi (talk) 06:59, 6 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I haven't been to any of the cities you mention, but based on the case you've laid out, the clear answer is "No". Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:25, 6 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Everywhere with some water invariably gets described as 'Venice of the Canadian far west' or something similar. I think these are usually taken as tongue in cheek rather than serious assertions. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 11:10, 6 April 2017 (UTC)


 * OK, thank you. I revert for now. --LPfi (talk) 19:54, 6 April 2017 (UTC)


 * According to Wikipedia, more than a score of cities have been titled Venice of the North (see w:Venice of the North). Stockholm seems to have held the epithet more often than Saint Petersburg. / Yvwv (talk) 21:00, 6 April 2017 (UTC)


 * The article is based on random uses, so not reliable, but it seems the phrase is used often enough not to be very useful. I changed in the intro but left it in the Russia section. --LPfi (talk) 08:42, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Boating in Finland
Round and round we go? I broke out the Boating in Finland section to a new article by that name. The section was eight screenfuls (for me), contributing to making this article unwieldy. Not much was copied from the other sections, so most overlap with e.g. a Boating in Sweden (now a redirect) was already there, between sections.

Much of the section is still here. I have been pruning a little, but I have not wanted to be too heavy-handed. Much should still be removed but I do not know what parts, and whether we should get rid of the current subsection structure.

--LPfi (talk) 08:58, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

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