User:(WT-en) Huttite/Pathfinder Expedition

The Pathfinder Expedition is a Wikivoyage Expedition to improve the connectedness of Wikivoyage articles by finding and building the natural and logical paths between articles in a way that reflects the real world.


 * If you'd like to join the effort, please add your signature to the bottom of the page!

Rationale
The Wikivoyage geographical hierarchy means that each destination (or city/town/village) where one can really go is merely a leaf on the geographical hierarchy tree. The country and region articles represent the branches of the tree as well as the empty spaces between destination points. However, in physical reality one cannot climb this tree. Rather, one must travel between the destinations, across the underlying regional surface. Consequently, every Wikivoyage destination article not only is linked from, (and to) its region it also needs a link to and from at least one other destination that is at the other end of the road.

Many Wikivoyage articles do not have links to or from very many other pages. Some have none at all. Best practice web design recommends that one avoids the creation of orphaned or dead-end pages.
 * In the case of orphaned pages, no pages link to that particular article.
 * In the case of dead-end pages, the article links does not link to other pages.
 * Pages can appear on both lists.

Also,
 * Articles that do not have links from other articles in the main namespace could be considered to be near-orphans (or lost children or even kidnapped children)
 * Articles that do not have links to other articles in the main namespace, other than their parent article, could be considered to be near-dead-ends (cul-de-sacs) as one cannot get to the article from another main namespace article, or if one gets there then one can only go back to where one came from.

This situation does not reflect the real world. The Pathfinder Expedition is intended to improve this situation.

Goals
Improve the connectedness of Wikivoyage articles by:
 * Creating links on other pages to link orphan pages into the geographic hierarchy or to other ways of seeing travel, as appropriate.
 * Creating links on dead-end pages that links them back into the geographic hierarchy or to other ways of seeing travel, as appropriate. (This includes adding a template to the page.)
 * Populating the content of the Get in section of each article that has this section in a way that is natural and logical for the traveller.
 * Populating the content of the Get out section of each article that has this section in a way that is natural and logical for the traveller.
 * Building out the regional hierarchy to accommodate all existing destination articles in a sensible way.
 * Supporting the Routes Expedition and other expeditions that improve the linking of articles.
 * Use existing article navigation systems, such as IsIn, IsPartOf, or route boxes. Although, implementing routeboxes in an article would generally be a solution that would meet a pathfinding need.
 * Identifying the way Wikivoyagers are doing things currently and identify the better or best practices that could be adopted.
 * Documenting generic processes and best practice of how to do Pathfinding.
 * (Optional) Developing tools to assist with doing the job.

Non-goals
It is not a goal to:
 * Create new articles that lie outside the policies and guidelines in order to promote connectedness. (This Expedition merely seeks to create the links or paths within the wiki, based on the existing articles.)
 * Develop or prescribe any new or special article navigation system.
 * Develop anything special that is, or should be, part of other expeditions.

Proposed changes to existing policies
No changes are proposed to existing policies or guidelines. Rather, the expedition would seek to document existing activities and practices of experienced Wikivoyagers, so that others could benefit from their knowledge.
 * One or more templates might be created to identify articles considered by this expedition to need attention.

Practice
To be developed and documented by the expedition.

Activities
To be organised and co-ordinated by the expedition.

Expedition members

 * (WT-en) Huttite - Proposer. Jan 2009