Talk:Star articles

Starry districts of huge cities
So, shameless self-promoter that I am, I just rewarded myself for spending way too much time on a map by slapping a Star label on Singapore/Chinatown. But do I need to make a map for every district until I can list Singapore here and/or dub the main Singapore article a Star? (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:11, 1 Jan 2006 (EST)


 * A couple of things: first, fantastic job on the Chinatown map. I especially appreciate the map how-to and I'm going to try and do a couple of maps myself.


 * Second, it's probably counterproductive to think of a star rating as a "reward" to a particular contributor. It's just a way for us to mark the status of an article. (I know you're probably joking, but others might not.)


 * Third, most of the listings in S/C aren't in MoS format, so I've downgraded it from star to guide. Sorry to be a downer, but.


 * Finally, I think you've got a good point about the relationship between a huge city and its district articles. I can see a region article being star quality without each and every city and sub-region being stars, but I'm not sure that the same goes for a city and its districts. --(WT-en) Evan 14:20, 1 Jan 2006 (EST)


 * For what it's worth Paris was made DOM even though some of the district articles are still at outline stage. -- (WT-en) Mark 09:12, 18 Feb 2006 (EST)

Country/region articles as Stars
Expanding on Evan's point above... what exactly are the Star criteria for region or country articles? Obviously a map with individual attractions isn't very practical (unless we're talking about the Vatican...), but is a CIA factbook map sufficient or should we insist on a full-fledged vector map which points out the cities/regions listed in the article? (WT-en) Jpatokal 03:40, 3 Jan 2006 (EST)


 * I like your idea about the map-- can we generalize and say that a star article should have a least one map helpful to the specific area covered? So a city map would need to be helpful on a city level (ie with streets/attractions), a region map would need to show the location of cities mentioned, and a country map should show at least the major regions maybe along with the capital?
 * On a related note, I think it the guide rating that needs to have additional/different criteria for regions/ countries. One thing that makes a good guide at these levels is not having specific listings for hotels, restaurants, etc, but having good general information that refers to citie articles.
 * Districts I still don't know about. But I wouldn't want to see a star rating on a city page unless the majority of the districts are guides/stars as well... (WT-en) Majnoona 15:08, 25 Jan 2006 (EST)


 * Re: the maps, I also think they should include all listed destinations, the CIA factbook maps are better than nothing, but usually lack (and sometimes spell differently) many common tourist destinations... (WT-en) Cacahuate 06:00, 13 January 2007 (EST)

How Perfect is Perfect
Something that happens pretty often is someone has a fairly well-done article with maps, and upgrades it to star -- see Cleveland. When I asked for a star-review of Penticton, it appeared that the following kinds of things are requirements for the star rating:
 * 1) No deviations in Manual-of-style formatting.
 * 2) All listings must have phone numbers, addresses, hours, and usually some indication of price
 * 3) All sections must have content.  The content should be good.
 * 4) Not mentioned in the review -- but is a map of the listings also a requirement?

Now I found it kinda fun to participate in perfectifying Penticton, but I'd like to make a couple of observations:

1. There is a huge quality gap between Guide and Star that is roughly comparable to the gap between vfd and guide. Did we mean for this to be? I'm kinda torn because I like seeing a "Quality Mark" that tells us all that an article is perfect (though always improvable). But on the other hand, it's a really difficult level to achieve -- Penticton just isn't very big so it was easier to accomplish.

2. One set of eyes is not enough for labelling a star. I think we should submit Star-candidates for review because I think it hurts a contributor's morale when we yank the Star away. And when people ask about "is this article ready?" they sometimes get very little response.

3. Our MoS changes occasionally. Some of our Stars appear to be grandfathered in and would not currently qualify for Star rating. In general, should they be downgraded to Guide? (I keep thinking I need to fix them instead of downgrading them since it's just formatting issues.) -- (WT-en) Colin 21:54, 12 May 2006 (EDT)


 * For #1, yeah, I think it's intentional and should stay that way. "Star" basically means 'throw away your Rough Planet, this is all you'll ever need".  I like the review idea though.  And the solution to #3 is the planned move to listings, where you just need to enter the data in a machine-readable format and the formatting is handled automagically. (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:26, 12 May 2006 (EDT)


 * My opinion is that we are not at a star level until a guide is comparable to a Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Fodor's, Let's Go, or Frommer's -- in readability, reliability, and consistency. I don't just think that's achievable -- we have existence proof that it's achievable.


 * Is that setting the bar too high? I don't think so. I'm kind of glad that we've made some intermediate article statuses between stub and star.


 * You're right about 2, by the way. I'm going to add some more comments on Santa Fe and try to put some time into stellarizing it. Also, I think articles like Santa Fe are great candidates for collaboration of the week; if everybody does 1 or 2 listings, we can finish it really quickly.


 * For 3: yeah, I think so. Hopefully our MoS is going to get more and more stable and the target stops moving so much. But it doesn't really change that often. --(WT-en) Evan 22:36, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

1. I don't see the leap from Guide to Star as that huge, certainly not as great as between VFD and Guide. It's largely a matter of dotting the t's and crossing the i's, and dressing it up with visuals. (And since most articles already have photos by the time they reach Guide, the latter probably just means adding a map.) Tightening up and/or punching up the prose is a lot less burdensome than filling out the freakin' Sleep section on a city where you don't happen to be a call girl who already knows the local hotels. ;)

2. I agree about the need for multiple eyes. I only put a Star on Isle Royale because Ryan told me I should, and I still hestitated – waiting for someone to tell me I shouldn't – because I didn't really feel qualified to. Even with supposedly objective criteria, there's enough subjectivity to evaluating the prose, and cussed nitpickiness to evaluating MoS compliance, that a nomination/voting process or an "X-number of editors agree it's a Star" requirement would be helpful. (Since the number of Stars is still pretty small, it might not be a bad idea to run them all through a confirmation process.)

3. The MoS should be stable enough by now that any changes should have little bearing on whether a Star falls from grace. I'd be more worried about subsequent additions and changes to the article (and there will be, even on "perfect", "complete" ones) degrading its status. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 22:38, 12 May 2006 (EDT)


 * I've created a page for Project:Star nominations, and a Template:Starnomination to be put at the bottom of any article being nominated, inviting comments. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 09:44, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

add date an article became starred
Are there any objections to adding date here when each article became rated as Star? (only to Project:Star articles, not to a section on the Main Page). Presently there's really few Stars -- dates will show both how long ago articles started to receive Stars. Plus, dates will show dynamics of the community: when we're launching many new Stars (this can be some measure of our productivity, and when we're achieving no new Stars for a long time. Thoughts? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 16:11, 25 November 2006 (EST)


 * Sounds good to me. --(WT-en) Evan 20:47, 10 December 2006 (EST)


 * What can be a next step towards achieving that? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 04:29, 11 December 2006 (EST)

Maintaining star status
So this has been touched on already, but what to do about articles that are already stars but have new problems or new rules that create problems? Paris/4th_arrondissement is missing some critical info (see the "see", "do" and "buy" sections), for example... Flores (Guatemala) is nominated for star status, and has less problems than this article (considering its size), but will probably (rightfully) not be upgraded, since we're being more strict now... What about something like creating a template infobox that goes on top of the page in question that says "This Star article no longer matches the MoS, and will be downgraded to Guide status if the problems aren't fixed in XX # of days"? Then on the talk page for the article the person adding this template can detail what they think needs fixin'... (WT-en) Cacahuate 05:57, 13 January 2007 (EST)

Star Potential
swept in from the pub

I wonder if there would be value in creating a block on the Project:Project page, and then an article to elaborate, for "Stars in the Making" -- articles that definitely don't qualify for Star status yet, but could be pushed to Star with comparatively little effort. I see this as distinct from CotW in two regards. CotW seems to be getting applied to articles that are a long way from Star, and the improvements being brought about via CotW usually aren't all that significant, so that using it for Star aspirants isn't likely to meet the goal. Second, pushing to Star can be one of those chance-encounter things where someone peruses the list of candidates, notices one that he/she knows something about, and says, "hey, I can fix that!" By having a list of possibilities there, rather than the one single article that is CotW at any given time, the chances of such a random encounter are increased.

Thoughts? A good beta test would be Albuquerque, which User:(WT-en) PerryPlanet has done a fantastic job with recently, yet it's clearly not gonna be a Star until it has a map, at the minimum. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 13:03, 28 December 2006 (EST)


 * I think that's a fantastic idea, I would certainly pay attention to it... (WT-en) Cacahuate 09:55, 15 January 2007 (EST)


 * How about ?


 * This also addresses Colin’s issue in a way, about there being a step between Guide and Star status. And addresses other concerns raised on the Project:Star nominations page about that page being reserved for articles we think are already stars and just need confirmation, not ones that need feedback and pushing, or that someone unilaterally declared a star. So by the time an article reaches that page it will likely just need a yes or no vote with simple critiqueing if anything.


 * As Bill mentioned above, CotW seems to be working in a different way on other issues, not to mention that it’s only for a week. I would see this more as an article status than just a collaboration, it would remain until it’s nominated for star status. A list of an articles problems or suggested fixes can be detailed on the talk page... Thoughts? (WT-en) Cacahuate 00:58, 18 January 2007 (EST)


 * It sounds like this proposal is basically creating another status level between guide and star. While there is currently a fairly big difference between "guide" and "star", we would need clear criteria if a new status is added.  If we aren't talking about adding a new status then I'm not sure that the added bureaucracy of a "nomination for nomination for star" process is necessarily a good idea. -- (WT-en) Ryan 01:17, 18 January 2007 (EST)


 * I'm all for bureaucracy and red tape, but adding another template and status is just going to make things more complicated as we drive ever closer to the Indian model of efficiency. Anywho, what's the problem with the guide status template that says 'plunge forward and help make this guide a star'? -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 01:38, 18 January 2007 (EST)


 * Well, the fact that there is a sea of guides, many of which are nowhere near Star status. I personally am thinking of a new status I guess... I'm almost thinking that this would replace (or make irrelevant) the slushpile... Right now, if someone thinks an article is a star or wants to know what else it needs (beyond what they can see themselves) they don't have a lot of options other than posting a message on the talk page (unlikely to gain much attention) or nominate it for Star status. An example would be Project:Star_nominations - the user nominated it because he's done all he sees to do, it's a great article, but there's things he hasn't thought of yet that need fixing. Tim pointed out that the subsections aren't guides, and I would guess now beyond that it's probably not going to garner much more attention, will sit there for a couple weeks and then be slushpiled. Whereas if he could say that it has star potential, a page that after a while would hopefully have an audience, then he would be inviting more feedback than "it's not there yet, but keep trying". (WT-en) Cacahuate 01:45, 18 January 2007 (EST)


 * I like the idea of drawing peoples attention to articles that are "nearly stars" in an attempt to push them that last little bit so that they become star status. However, we do already have 5 levels of article quality - do we really need another? In my understanding, the Guide level is when an article reaches a level of quality where it can be used almost completely on it's own for planning/doing a trip. The Star level is when you have enough info to not need anything else at all - all the info you need is in the guide. So in that sense, the Guide level is the "star potential" level that has been proposed. What I think happens too much is that people push usable articles up to "Guide" status too early, when they should still be at the "usable" level. SO I reckon rather than introducing another status level we try and make the original status levels far more clearly defined.


 * I created Template:failedstarnomination to draw attention to articles that were nominated but weren't quite at star status, in order to help people realise what needs to be done to get them to star. Maybe we should merge the starpotential and failedstarnomination? I'm aware that failedstarnomination isn't particularly visible - I didn't want to stick a banner at the bottom of the page saying this article isn't good enough, because I don't want viewers to read that and not take the article seriously - so maybe we should alter that and stick it at the bottom of the page where usual status templates go? -- (WT-en) Tim 08:29, 19 January 2007 (EST)


 * Yeah... what I like about the starpotential is that it's more positive and would feel like you're helping articles on their way up instead of saving sinking ships, otherwise we could just let a million articles get nominated then slushed, and just promote the slush pile.


 * I would certainly say (as you suggest) that it would go onto the failed nominees pages, but I also think it should be applied to guides that are nearing star, so they can be perfected before being nominated... template aside though, I think Bill's suggestion about putting whatever is decided upon on the project page, and having a page about it also, is what will potentially draw in the perfectionists... (WT-en) Cacahuate 08:58, 19 January 2007 (EST)


 * Just saw the first paragraph of your post Tim, I also agree with that, making guide status more strict would help the problem. While I do think that starpotential could be another status level, it also could just be a project for perfecting guides before they get nominated... (WT-en) Cacahuate 09:07, 19 January 2007 (EST)


 * Laying aside the banner issue (btw, I'd personally prefer starpotential to failedstarnomination and would suggest a merge), my original thought was that there is a need to make Star candidates more "visible." Putting a banner on the Star candidate only accomplishes that if you actually read the candidate article already; it doesn't particularly call one's attention to the fact that the article exists and is nearly of Star quality.  For that, mention on the main page or project page seems like the preferred way to go.  I don't think the process for that has to be too bureaucratic.  (BTW, Andrew, that shot has a considerable resemblance to my own office -- and I am in fact part (American) Indian. :-) )-- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 10:08, 19 January 2007 (EST)

I moved Template:failedstarnomination to Template:Starpotential per the above discussion... now we just need to create Project:Star potential and see what that develops into - having sat on this a little longer, I'm less inclined to follow my previous thoughts about it being a new article status, and more inclined to continue to more accurately define the existing article statuses. I'd still love to see Bill (or someone) follow his idea and put a box on the project or main page. We do need some sort of project that draws attention to Guides that are nearing Stars so that people can solicit help before nominating an article. (WT-en) - Cacahuate 20:50, 22 February 2007 (EST)


 * This is a great proposal - I'd love to have a venue for peer review of articles I've worked on. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 21:06, 22 February 2007 (EST)

Returning to this after some time away: The intent of "star potential" is rather different than "failed star nominations." The latter are a subset of the former, pages that have been through the nomination process and found wanting. However, there are a lot of articles out there that have not been through the nomination process yet because it is known that they would fail, yet could be pushed to Star with comparatively little effort. The Albuquerque straw man applies here: nobody is nominating it for Star, because it is missing one sine qua non (map), yet fill that in and it sure looks like a Star to me. I'll try redoing that template and we can see what happens. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 17:42, 12 August 2007 (EDT)


 * It would be useful to have a category of pages like this. If all that's missing is a map, I would usually be happy to make one. But I wasn't aware, for example, that Albequerque is otherwise ready. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 22:52, 12 August 2007 (EDT)


 * So I tried a go at Project:Star potential, please modify it as you wish. We still need a though. And why do we add the Star potential to the Talk Page? Isn't it better just at the bottom of the Main article? (WT-en) Globe-trotter 17:49, 17 December 2009 (EST)

distribute Star articles in a printed form?
Archived from the Pub:

Recurring to the early-years idea to distribute Wikivoyage articles in a printed form (and thus findind new contributors, not only helping people to travel smarter): have anyone tried to distribute articles in Star status? They are definitely the best candidates to start... Maybe start talking to the hotels and cafes that we recommend in those articles? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 19:00, 26 November 2006 (EST)

If we're not ready yet to start doing specific talks with specific hotels, what about helping those wikivoyagers who may have good contacts with some hotels? Can we encourage them to talk about distribution, and have some place at Wikivoyage where they can ask for help/we talk on policies etc etc? Or the plan is just dramatically different? ;-) --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 04:35, 11 February 2007 (EST)

BUMP :-) --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 18:01, 13 February 2007 (EST)


 * Personally I don't care either way if they ever get distributed in printed form... I think they're most handy as an online guide that you can print last minute and have the most up to date version. But even if the goal is to print them someday, I think we're still in the stage of needing to write them instead of what to do after they're written, for the most part (WT-en) - Cacahuate 11:26, 16 February 2007 (EST)


 * I would vote for ReleaseEarlyReleaseOften here--even if we start only with a few articles which are already Guides or Stars. Otherwise the feedback reward for the community remains in too distant future, and noone believe it will ever happen--while we keep referring that "we ultimately write a printed guide, not really so much an online guide". --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 12:12, 16 February 2007 (EST)

Format
The star articles should be something that we want the world to see, and a great starting point for aspiring writers. But this page/list is ugly, and IMO not a great portal for newcomers. I'd like to see something more colorful and eye catching, and tried a first draft here.

I'd like to feature the star articles a little more prominently on the Main Page once we have moved to a more attractive, user-friendly format, so that we put our best foot forward to the world. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 22:22, 1 November 2009 (EST)
 * I see what you're going for, but I think there's also some value in having a compact easily-browsable list. Category:Star articles is a compact list, but it's not usefully organized by geography like this list is.  Also, adding a picture for each Star article makes for a lot of whitespace, which means a lot of scrolling.  It's a good start; I'll give some thought to how it can be improved.  (WT-en) LtPowers 10:02, 2 November 2009 (EST)


 * I support the idea, and I think colorful and eye-catching is a good thing here. If this is a format for a separate page on Star articles, maybe use 2- or 3-column format, with pictures on outer sides (if 2-column format used)? And, it would be very inspiring to see the world/continent map with regions having Star articles highlighted--not sure how to make it easily comprehendable, though. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 10:30, 2 November 2009 (EST)


 * I actually was hoping to put together something more stylish, more compact, in columns, and without all the whitespace ;) But since my (WT-en) first attempt was both clumsy and too time consuming, I decided to just get the content in place. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 17:29, 2 November 2009 (EST)

And Denis, how does this look:

--(WT-en) Peter Talk 23:44, 2 November 2009 (EST)


 * I think the map is a great start towards better visualization! --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 01:52, 3 November 2009 (EST)


 * It might be nice to highlight the countries in which the stars appear, but that might conflict with any future region-level star articles. (WT-en) LtPowers 11:51, 3 November 2009 (EST)


 * I think we could indicate region-level stars just by outlining them, or even giving them a different color. I really liked the idea, and have updated the map. If we're lucky, such a map could spark a little nationalist-motivated hard work ;) --(WT-en) Peter Talk 19:45, 3 November 2009 (EST)


 * That's even better, and nationalist motivation is a good side effect I seeked in the first place :-) --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 03:06, 4 November 2009 (EST)


 * Nice map, but in the article I don't think every destination should have it's own picture. It makes a way messy appearance. At least just one picture per city (so not district) and we should even leave some out of those, so it's not too crowded. But I like the idea. (WT-en) Globe-trotter 19:07, 7 December 2009 (EST)

Bump
OK, I've tried an additional two versions after Version 1. Version 2 keeps all the information from version 1, but puts it into columns, as previously suggested. Version 3 is more minimal, but still way more eye catching than what we have now—I've done away with text and tried turning it into a gallery a la Previous Destinations of the month.

I wanted to try using separate wiki section headers as in version 3, but with the text and pictures of version 2 displayed in columns within each section, but I couldn't quite figure out how to make that happen.

I don't like the idea of treating different star articles differently, such as giving pictures only to city articles, but not district articles. The rewarding feeling of seeing an article into which you have put a lot of work featured here is a good incentive to keep people doing the kind of rigorous, difficult, and sometimes tedious work of creating new stars. I wouldn't want us to undermine that in any way. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 23:05, 2 May 2010 (EDT)


 * Very good work and a huge step forward from the existing presentation. I really like Version 2, and certainly agree with the point about not treating star articles differently according to hierarchical position. A minor point: in Chrome at least, the column widths in Version 2 are displaying as different (first column is wider). --(WT-en) Burmesedays 23:21, 2 May 2010 (EDT)


 * I kind of like the third one. It keeps the page compact while still catching your eye with the picture. Although I agree that the districts should be featured equally, do you think it would be better to group them under their city as a category? Obviously Chicago is the best example of this; There are so many districts from the same city, it just seems to make sense to group them together under the city rather than floating among the cities. (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 01:12, 3 May 2010 (EDT)


 * I like #2 also, looking good.... and once the whole city is a star, I don't see why it would be necessary to continue to list the individual districts as well, especially as the # of star articles grows – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 02:23, 3 May 2010 (EDT)


 * I would make a strong case for featuring all star articles be they districts of a starred city or cities within a starred region or whatever. From experience, I can say that it is a huge slog bringing a city or district templated article up to star standard, regardless of the status of its parent article, and we should in no way be demotivating users to do that.
 * I do though like ChubbyWimbus' idea of grouping the articles.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 02:52, 3 May 2010 (EDT)


 * Peter, that's great! Personally I like #2 as well. One comment: maybe it's better to re-balance contintents across the columns to aviod "Continent (continued) on top of the 2nd column. Also, I think current captions for pictures add confusion. We'd better either remove them at all, or duplicate article name there. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 03:00, 3 May 2010 (EDT)
 * I prefer Version 2, too. I think the attribution is important and on the other hand might motivate people from grey parts to flip the coin. (WT-en) jan 05:50, 3 May 2010 (EDT)


 * The problem I have with version 3 is that it omits the sparkling text that is supposed to be the keystone of a star article. Images are great, and absolutely needed, but it seems a shame not to include a bit of the text that is so important to gaining that star icon.  =)  As for columns within sections, it seems like there ought to be a way to do it.  Wikipedia has templates to handle columnizing, but apparently they don't work in IE or Opera.  Other than that, maybe tables are the only way to handle it.  (WT-en) LtPowers 10:08, 3 May 2010 (EDT)

2 clearly seems the most popular, so I've made a bunch of the suggested revisions to it: Version 2 revised. Image captions are gone (which I agree helps, and which mirrors our DotM features), thumbnail boxes are gone, Europe is subdivided by top-level regions, ToC is gone, and North America is now no longer split across columns. This makes the NA column long, leaving whitespace on the left, but this strikes me as less of a problem than it did before. Hopefully "The Rest of the World" will get its act together ;)

Re: grouping districts by huge cities. I already did this? Or are you suggesting I strip the huge cities out from the top-level regions? --(WT-en) Peter Talk 10:14, 3 May 2010 (EDT)


 * I am not so sure the captions were a mistake - I rather liked them. But no big deal. On groupings, it would make sense to me if Bali were followed by its two sub article stars — Nusa Lembongan and Ubud — rather than Singapore jumping into the middle.  This is very good work. Well done done Peter.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 11:00, 3 May 2010 (EDT)


 * Looks great now! --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 15:22, 3 May 2010 (EDT)


 * Agreed &mdash; this is really nice work. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 19:14, 3 May 2010 (EDT)


 * Along with grouping the Bali regions, I was thinking that once there are a few districts from the same city, we give the city its own subheading like we would do if we had enough cities in the same country. The United States has already been given regional subheadings, and since there are plenty of Chicago districts (as well as the main city page), I think it would make sense to give "Chicago" a subheading. I think this will inevitably have to happen when we get more stars anyway, but Chicago is already ready for it. (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 20:58, 3 May 2010 (EDT)


 * Point taken, since Chicago articles comprise 40% of our stars right now! I've added that extra subheading. I'm sure there are more possible improvements to the way this is presented (maybe giving a subtle background color to each subheading?), but I've reached the end of my ugly and incompetent css/html attempts. I figure I'll give this a week to see if anyone objects to the new format, then make it live. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 23:32, 3 May 2010 (EDT)

OK, I've now made the change, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out! It would be nice to spruce up the star section of the Main Page too—maybe make it more eye catching with use of the star icon? I really would like the star articles to be a main point of entry for new users. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 21:48, 11 May 2010 (EDT)


 * Could we set up a section with a random selection of star articles? I wouldn't want to lose the "newest" list, though, so if it's too much to have both we should just stick with newest.  (WT-en) LtPowers 22:53, 11 May 2010 (EDT)

Diving Sites
The diving site just added is in Africa, but isn't the article a travel topic? Should it go there? (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 03:13, 4 December 2009 (EST)
 * Yes, dive sites are travel topics and should be listed under that headline (for the same reason Chicago skyline guide is there and not under "Midwest"). (WT-en) LtPowers 09:42, 4 December 2009 (EST)

WT stars map &mdash; colours
I find the blue dots used to identify location of the subjects of our star articles do not show up well on the map. I suggest a higher contrast colour. Maybe something really bright &mdash; after all stars traditionally are points of light in the surrounding darkness. Cheers, • • • (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) Talk 03:02, 7 October 2011 (EDT)

Namespace
Why was this page moved into the main namespace? It's not a destination or travel topic. It contains information not about travel, but about Wikivoyage itself (a list of pages that are star articles on Wikivoyage), so it should be in the project namespace. I think the same also applies to Previous Destinations of the month, Previously Off the beaten path, and Previous Featured travel topics. – sumone10154 ( talk ) 21:18, 16 October 2012 (CEST)


 * Star articles should give an explanation what Star articles are, similar to Guide articles. This is a showcase article linked to from the Main Page. It would be odd to send site visitors from the Main Page into the Project namespace if they are not interested in editing articles. On Wikipedia, these showcase articles have a special Portal namespace, maybe that could be a solution for this issue. Please continue this discussion at Talk:Previous Destinations of the month. --Globe-trotter (talk) 00:43, 17 October 2012 (CEST)

Missing image
The Sheki entry is missing an appropriate image leading to a less-than-showcase appearance.

14:55, 28 December 2012 Thehelpfulbot (Talk | contribs) deleted page File:Xan Saray Courtyard.jpg (Cleanup: Deleting empty file pages) -- A l i c e ✉ 05:49, 17 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I've been working on getting the Sheki photos transferred today, but the old lead image, unfortunately, will be lost. I'll see if I can't dig up a better one, but for now I've swapped photos. --Peter Talk 06:17, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Collaboration
Does this project have a collaborative effort such as "Collaboration of the Week", or month, etc.? Many WikiProjects on Wikipedia use this model to bring editors together to work on articles. It would be nice if a group of quality editors could work together to promote articles to star status. --Another Believer (talk) 00:46, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, and may I suggest starting with my personal favorite, Portland, Oregon?! :P --Another Believer (talk) 00:46, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * See Collaboration of the month. -- Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 01:02, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Maintaining Star Status
Because the world is always changing, I think it would be helpful to establish some sort of guide/rule for maintaining star status. What I propose is for periodic checks of information (prices, websites, if the places even still exist, etc.) and write on the article's Talk Page what you checked and in what sections. For example, "Verified 'Eat' listing information" and include the date. That way, others can see it and know what has been updated and when.

This is NOT a proposal to remove star status. It is just a way to track exactly how dated our stars are. If an article was made a star 6 years ago, that would mean it's overdo for a check-up. If a star HAS been verified, it would be good to have a record of when/what so that other users know either to move on to another article to verify or to do another check-up.

If the check-up reveals a lot of changes that the user is unable to simply update themselves, they could then nominate it for de-starring and hopefully others could save it. If not, of course, it would have to be downgraded, but it's better for us to downgrade an article that is grossly outdated than it is to have star status be an end-all. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:19, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Map
A star needs to be added to represent Okayama's recent addition. I cannot do it myself. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:51, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I've done this, though it's hard to tell because Hiroshima is right next door. For future reference, it's a pretty easy task.  Powers (talk) 00:15, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Removing star status altogether
Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to star status. However, since things can get out of date, and many of star articles don't even have coordinates (and, therefore, do not really showcase the best of Wikivoyage), I think it might be worthwhile to consider removing star status for articles and merge these into "guide" status.

The problem is that there are some articles which are really good and perhaps deserve even more than just guide status. However, I think requirements like custom pagebanners, etc. make guide status a high level to reach for an article, let alone star status. Star status seems to be over-the-top; e.g., all the nominating just to give an article a status that most people wouldn't notice anyway, or understand what it all means.

An example of a star article that's not particularly good is Menzies. Quite a few of the listings don't even have coordinates. I brought this up on the Menzies talk page but got no response. There are probably many guide articles that are just as good as the Menzies article, just that they haven't been nominated yet.

What do others think about this? Removing star status would be a big step, but it would save us a lot of time over something that isn't particularly important, IMO.

Is everyone okay with this being posted here? If it should be at Wikivoyage talk:Star articles or somewhere like that, I'll move it, but I doubt it would get the attention there that is necessary for discussing something this important. --Comment by Selfie City  ( talk | contributions ) 04:18, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't pay much attention to star status, but there are some editors who put a lot of effort into improving articles to get them to star status, and improving articles is good. So I'd be in favour if keeping it. Would we consider making the status a tine-limited thing, i.e., it automatically expires after two years, after which it is reviewed to see if it has been updated enough (and kept up with our changing requirements for star status) to warrant the status being renewed? Ground Zero (talk) 04:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Star status is a good way to motivate people to improve an article and to highlight a good article, but yes with [?project=wikivoyage&depth=10&categories=Listings_with_no_coordinates%0D%0AStar_articles&show_redirects=no&doit=1 45 star status articles that have listings without coordinates] a time limit or formal review would be a good idea. Not sure the Nominations to remove Star status process is working at the moment. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:16, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Star articles are written one by one over time and probably edited less than others (not that much to improve), so it is quite natural they are written to older standards – and not updated much more often than articles in general. But they are not too many, 74 in Category:Star articles, so making an expedition to find banner images, update listings etc. would not be too difficult. I do not use the star status too much, but when trying to learn what to aim for, the star articles of similar type are a good starting point. And besides motivating editors, I am sure many readers enjoy the star guides. So, I suggest making a concerted effort to get the star articles worth their stars. Later, I think the periodic review is also a good tool. When we have assured star articles are up to current standards, I think we should start giving them more visibility, e.g. wp-sv features a star of the day on their main page. --LPfi (talk) 07:29, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that some people really enjoy that process and status, so I'm inclined to keep it.
 * It sounds like adding coordinates to star articles could be a useful COTM. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I strongly oppose removing star status altogether, but conversely strongly support reviewing articles marked as stars to check whether they really fulfil the criteria. Fixer-uppers should be fixed, and those which require more work may be bumped down to whatever status is appropriate. A COTM could well be the best way to handle this, and one which I may even participate in. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:34, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Just in case people have not noticed, this months cotm is adding coordinates to listings of star status articles. Although a few have been done in the last week, it is a lot of work. Will need more contributors to complete them all by the end of the month. All welcome to join in. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I'd keep the concept of Star status articles, though we somehow need to streamline the process for the nomination, and that might include rethinking the requirements for Star status. For years the Star article nomination has been at a standstill, with the oldest discussion being started back in 2014. When you notice this, you probably don't feel much enthusiasm nominating new articles or otherwise participating in the discussions.
 * Almost all of the current star articles were largely written back in the Wikitravel era before we had dynamic maps and by editors that have left the project. This means we don't necessarily have anyone on board who knows all the small details about e.g. districts of Chicago and Washington, D.C. or Bali, and as the Star articles almost certainly are out of date to some extent, their status should be reviewed. Instead, there might be other articles that are worthy of Star status — for instance articles that have been recently featured on the Main Page. -- ϒψιλον (talk ) 20:48, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

As the discussion period stated on Star nominations is 3 weeks, should we not remove most of the nomanation proposals currently there. Then maybe start afresh with hopefully more people assisting. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:32, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Sure, although there are some 2018 nominations that are still valid and haven't been reviewed much yet. All the other nominations are like Jarndyce v Jarndyce. --Comment by Selfie City  ( talk | contributions ) 16:37, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Clearly the 3 week period is too short. It's not just a question of deciding whether or not an article is good enough (akin to deciding whether or not a user is fit to be admin), there's a process whereby the community gives suggestions on how the article can be improved, and these suggestions then have to be agreed to and effectuated. There has been, for instance, much useful feedback on my Farnborough nomination which I intend to implement, but haven't had the chance to do so, and no-one else seems bothered to. I don't see why there has to be an arbitrary time limit - the articles aren't going anywhere and, for the most part, neither are we - but it does take time to imagine and implement perfection :-) Time that we, as volunteers with busy lives, don't always have in spades. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:05, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, the 3-week period hasn't been followed at least since mid-2014; perhaps if it was followed, we'd get more done in relation to our star articles. And with the nominations that are 3+ years old, enough feedback has been provided, IMO. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with feedback, but after a few years it's long past time to decide whether the nomination should succeed or fail. Reasons to support/oppose were listed years ago; long ago, it was time to come to a decision, and we didn't, so now we should.


 * However, with the newer nominations, feedback is needed and would be very helpful. And I think the period for nominating could be expanded to 2 months, perhaps, but not much more. What's needed at the WV:Star nominations page is more activity, not more time. --Comment by Selfie City  ( talk | contributions ) 17:12, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Extending discussion period to 2 months sound like a good idea. --Traveler100 (talk) 17:28, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I suppose two months is enough for people to see the nomination and give initial feedback. If the discussion is then moved to the article's talk page, the improvements can be made and the discussions go on. I have not been involved, so I cannot say whether there is some timeframe beyond two months in which the articles could get ready for being accepted, but if it takes more than a year, a new nomination is probably more useful. --LPfi (talk) 17:41, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Are there any objections to expanding the time to 2 months? If not, I will make the change; however, if we set 2 months as the limit, I think we should get those really old nominations out of the way. --Comment by Selfie City  ( talk | contributions ) 17:53, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * As long as the discussions are swept to the article's talk page, as LPfi suggested, and not uselessly archived into oblivion, I can support a two month limit. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:15, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Okay; I'll adjust accordingly. And now it's time to keep the page current so that Star nominations never gets abandoned again. Once again, thanks for all the input on this. --Comment by <font color="Olive">Selfie City  ( talk | <font color="Olive">contributions ) 18:23, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * K7L plunged forward with this edit. I'm not exactly opposed to it, but after a decision was made by the community I don't see why this should be edited so quickly.


 * Hopefully, though, everyone's okay with K7L's edit. Then we can move ahead with the star nominations. --Comment by <font color="Olive">Selfie City  ( talk | <font color="Olive">contributions ) 23:17, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The whole point of the proposed two-month period was to leave a reasonable amount of time to fix any deficiencies in the article. If there's consensus that a page is ready to go as-is, why wait so long? K7L (talk) 23:30, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree there. If there's consensus to make it a star article, we should go ahead and make it one. I think I understand your edit better now; I thought more that you were reinforcing the old three-week rule despite the consensus on this page. But if you're just helping articles reach star status faster if there is consensus, then I don't think anyone will be against that. --Comment by <font color="Olive">Selfie City  ( talk | <font color="Olive">contributions ) 23:32, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Progress on the star nominations
We've brought down the list of star nominations from 11 to 9 and I'm waiting a little before I look to slush a couple more. The star nominations revival back in early September was short-lived, and while there was quite a lot of activity, not any real progress was made other than expanding the list of nominations. This time, a lot to do with Traveler100's nomination to de-star La Macarena and update some policy details, real progress is being made.

The progress is that T100 has upgraded Travemunde to star and I've made a couple minor edits to the article itself &mdash; things like bullets before a couple listings, a better spot for paragraph, so we can get moving with these nominations. I also slushed the nomination for Indianapolis. I'm hoping to get consensus to slush Quy Nhon and perhaps slush Kraainem, along with a support vote for Childs. All that is needed is input, which does not require too much knowledge about the articles. Really just confirmations so we can get the star nominations going the way they should again.

Everyone who has helped on this, thanks for your help so far as we continue to make Wikivoyage a great travel guide. --Comment by <font color="Olive">Selfie City  ( talk | <font color="Olive">contributions ) 18:22, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Yep, the progress continues. We're getting close to being able to slush one and we've also nominated a new one, Bouzigues and there are 2 de-star nominations, La Macarena and Isle Royale National Park. Technically, I still should mention this information here per policy, but we'll see how that goes soon. --Comment by <font color="Olive">Selfie City  ( talk | <font color="Olive">contributions ) 21:04, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Map is outdated
There are have been several new star articles added since the last time the map was updated. Is there anyone capable of updating it who's willing to do so? If not, should we remove it and replace with a dynamic map that at least most people can keep updated? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:38, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, it looks like it was last updated in 2017. I agree that a dynamic map would be the way to go. I think what we need is for Template:Star-article-archive to be updated to accept a wikidata ID that can then populate Template:Mapframe in the same way that Template:Marker, Template:Listing, and Template:Mapgroup-item do. The programming is beyond my capabilities. --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 07:35, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know whether that would be strictly necessary; we could just put the names of each article in geomarkers .--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:08, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There seems to be a hard return somewhere (in Template:Star-article-archive, I suspect) that prevents integrating this cleanly with the existing article format:


 * --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 10:49, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If you have a chance, would you please see if anything can be done with this? Thank you! --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 11:00, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

I've plunged ahead and added a dynamic map and have started adding markers. This will not be a one-day task. I greatly dislike the layout/organization of the article. I find the HTML and two columns needlessly complicated and difficult to edit. I think it should just use wiki-style sections. Does anybody else have an opinion on this? --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 15:09, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

That didn't take as long as I thought. I left out markers for districts of star cities and other "sub-articles", as well as non-location-specific articles. It would be great if someone could make sure I haven't omitted anything or otherwise messed up. --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 18:58, 7 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Fantastic! Thanks for doing that.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 22:05, 7 February 2021 (UTC)