User:(WT-en) Bill Ellett

I'm a newbie on wikivoyage, but have been online since the 1970's.

As a volunteer tour guide at Cahokia Mounds, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I enjoy meeting the public and talking about what I've learned of life in the US prior to the time of Columbus (many people seem to believe that the new world did not exist until 1492).

Previously, I had volunteered at zoos in South Carolina and Georgia, working with people, animals, and computers. For the last forty years, I've been making my food and gas money as a librarian, working in, with, and for libraries. Maybe I'll be ready to retire in another ten years.

I've visited China, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, Bolivia, Peru, Canada, and Mexico (and transited through the Tokyo airport). But I have yet to make it to Europe.

I enjoy travel by train; crossing Canada on "The Canadian" was a great experience. I've also taken trains in China, Australia, Peru, and the US.

But visiting Machu Picchu in Peru remains my travel highpoint.

Current status
I am offline for the next several days, back October 14.

First page I worked on

 * Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

Pages I'm now working on

 * List of itineraries
 * Tips for rail travel ?Divide into multiple pages?
 * American byways (not created yet)
 * Lewis and Clark Trail and Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail -- Understand needs work, and need to merge pages.

Pages I've worked on (Topics)

 * Travel topics
 * National Trails System
 * UNESCO World Heritage List
 * United States National Parks ?divide into multiple pages or subsections under state?
 * List of phrasebooks

Pages I've worked on (Places)

 * Collinsville (Illinois)

Things I've tried to update

 * Pages missing traveltopics template, or adding topics when not listed on Travel topics (done?)
 * Pages missing itinerary template, or adding itineraries when not listed on List of itineraries
 * pages missing countryguide template when they are countries
 * Broken redirects (ongoing)
 * Double redirects (ongoing)
 * Short/Empty pages (ongoing)
 * Adding redirects for lists so they will be included in Pagenames starting with "List of" (done?)
 * correcting/removing undefined templates from the MAIN namespace. Look at Special:Mostlinkedtemplates for red-lined items. Pick links. Ignore links in image, user, and twikivoyage namespaces. Most are typos or syntax problems. Unfortunately, you can't tell from the special: page which are linked to main or other namespaces, so you must pick every one. Pick 700 listings per page, so you get all on one page. Paging back and forth means that the entries shuffle around on you, so one page works. Use Special:Mostlinkedtemplates with &limit=700&offset=0 to get the 700 entry list. (There's actually about 62-630 right now, so 700 gets all). Look at: Special:Unusedtemplates for defined but unused ones. These often are wikipedia templates with errors.

Interesting aspects of how site is set up

 * searching at wikivoyage
 * geo template and geocoding
 * improved access to help/policy information
 * use of categories at wikivoyage
 * use of templates for categorizing and locating information by type (ex traveltopics, guidepark)

Questions I'm thinking about

 * Should United States National Parks have subsections such as Parks, Monuments, Trails under each state, or be divided into multiple pages?

Waiting for consensus, don't forget

 * Talk:Pidgin
 * Talk:Europe
 * Template talk:Forecast
 * If Template:Tag is deprecated, then remove from the articles which currently use it.
 * Wikivoyage_talk:Disambiguation_pages -- edit help page
 * Wikivoyage_talk:Template_index
 * Talk:Calendar_of_events_and_festivals

Not yet proposed:
 * Need to update Project:Template index to include authorized templates for the MAIN namespace missing from the list.
 * what are the special links available for the "other sites" box, such as wikipedia, world66, or open directory? On London page we see wikevents, but their site seems dead (or weekend maintenance). Can't get past first page at www.wikevent.org.