User:Inferno986return

Former Wikitravel editor, now fully committed to Wikivoyage. I also edit Wikipedia, Wikibooks and upload files to WikiCommons.

I primarily like to work on pages related to the UK, but I am equally at home editing pages abroad. I also have an obsession with the US state of Nevada. I really need to plan an itinerary there, one of these days.


 * Hometown: Cheltenham
 * Residences: Tewkesbury, Oxford, Derby, Much Wenlock (Motleyriggioni), London
 * Pages I have started: Bewdley?, Bridgwater, Brixham, Charlestown, Haslemere, Marlborough, Searchlight, Winchcombe, Wellesbourne

Currently, my largest project is the Assassin's Creed Tour page. My goal is to at least get it to a usable state within Wikivoyage's guidelines. Then maybe a Robert Langdon tourism (Dan Brown tourism), Fallout (3, New Vegas, 4, 76, etc.), Twilight, Days Gone or a general Witchcraft itinerary? I managed to help bump up the Harry Potter tourism and Monopoly itinerary guides.

Modus operandi

 * I like dynamic maps and I try to add a Mapframe to articles that may only have a simple drawing or no map at all.
 * I like weatherboxes using Climate. I use Wikipedia's own data and then the Met Office for UK destinations, The Weather Channel for US destinations and AccuWeather for everywhere else.
 * I like to add go markers to train stations throughout the world. If the train station is in Great Britain or the Republic of Ireland I add a link to that station's page too.
 * I like routeboxes and have taken an interest in adding more to UK pages. Particularly in my native Gloucestershire and surrounding cities.
 * I like to add colour-coded region maps to articles such as Sardinia, San Luis Potosi (state) and Lower Austria.

Neat tricks and projects
Here are some neat tricks I have pinched from other pages that hopefully streamline Wikivoyage for both editors and readers. The   demonstrates placeholder content that needs to be filled by the editor.


 * Link to a listing (requires the Wikidata field is declared within the listing):
 * e.g. To link Excalibur Hotel and Casino use the following:


 * Add a dynamic map to page:


 * Add a mapshape to page:


 * Add a marker to an airport/train station/bus station on a page:  Alternatively, a   can be used, but for simple one-line entries I prefer the in-line option.


 * If the destination can be gotten to via a train from London, specify which station and add a link to it. If there is a missed station add a redirect to the appropriate London district it resides in. London is a big city with over 330 train stations (not including all tube stops) and I think it's a good idea to break it down for travellers even at a regional level.
 * Clapham Junction
 * London Paddington
 * London Victoria
 * London Waterloo and London Waterloo East
 * London Liverpool St
 * London King's Cross (with the apostrophe, though I have created a redirect without)
 * London Euston
 * London St Pancras or London St Pancras International
 * London Bridge (As London Bridge is already a disambiguation page, link to London/South_Bank with  instead.)
 * London Fenchurch St
 * London Charing Cross
 * London Cannon St
 * London Marylebone
 * Willesden Junction
 * City Thameslink


 * For London tube stops/stations I have started using the station templates to show which lines connect to it. For example: Baker Street. To achieve this use . Use the Rint template to check the syntax for lines.


 * I have also assisted with adding routeboxes to UK articles. If you know the area and particularly if a major road such as a motorway or A road passes through/near the article. I'd recommend adding it in.


 * If an airport is notable enough, but doesn't have an IATA, the ICAO can be added instead with, substitute the ABCD with the code. Maybe an ICAO template, should be made alongside the IATA template?


 * Started Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria redirects with the same purpose as the London train stations.


 * The London Overground lines finally have distinguishing names (though they are far too political for my liking).

Travel topics wikilinking
Despite using and editing Wikivoyage for almost a decade (wow, that long?) I am unfamiliar with the Travel topics. So I started using more internal wikilinks to give better exposure to these articles such as:


 * Excursions: abandoned settlements (ghost towns), mining tourism, nuclear tourism
 * Itineraries: Assassin's Creed tour, Harry Potter tourism
 * British history: Roman Empire, Medieval England, Wars of the Roses, English Civil War, Industrial Revolution, World War I, World War II
 * Accommodation: camping, hotels, hostels, wild camping
 * Shopping: antiques shopping, clothes, furniture, markets
 * Technologies: computers, electrical systems, mobile phones, [[Wi-Fi]
 * Public transport: buses, chicken buses, flights, hitchhiking, metro, taxis
 * Drugs: cannabis, coca (cocaine), medication

Activites and sports

 * Activities: beaches, birdwatching, cryptozoology, cycling, horse riding, skydiving, hunting, fishing, hiking, yacht
 * driving
 * Ball sports: soccer or association football, rugby football, golf, cricket
 * Water sports: surfing, snorkeling, sailing, windsurfing

Culinary

 * Cuisine: gastronomy, Italian cuisine, Mexican cuisine, Thai cuisine
 * Food: bread and confectionery, camping food cheese, chocolate, fruit and vegetables, halal, meat
 * Drink: beer, coffee, liquor, soft drinks, tea, water, wine, whiskey
 * Other: tipping

Geography

 * Climate: climate, time zones, hot weather, arid region safety
 * Natural disasters: earthquakes, flooding, hurricanes, volcanoes
 * Outdoors: map, sunburn

Useful pages
Here I am trying to make a useful reference for pages both on and off Wikivoyage that help streamline page editing. Please share this around if it is useful for you. :-D

Wikivoyage

 * Banners
 * Time and date formats

Wikipedia

 * Greek alphabet
 * Greek diacritics
 * List of London Underground stations

Visual Studio Code or Atom
Really useful text editors with regular expression (regex) capabilities that make finding and replacing quick and simple. Recommended for region pages with a lot of map markers, as well as adding the listing templates to the See, Do, Eat, Drink, Sleep sections.

For example using this regex I can automate creating listings with the correct listing template throughout an article. I do this by section in Wikivoyage articles that still use the old list format:

Put this regular expression in find:

This regex checks for any series of characters and saves them to a register for later using. This is done twice for each string that I want to find and save. Specifically the parentheses  mean to save the text and the    mean any text string.

The  means to cover all text to the end of the line. Otherwise only the first character of the description will get highlighted.

Put this regex into replace:

The saved text from earlier is stored in order so I put the name as  and the description as. In wiki markup the URL goes before the name so you may need to put the  instead. Note that regex syntax doesn't seem to be standardised, for example Notepad++ uses  instead.

Before:


 * Listing name - Listing description here

After:



I also find Atom helpful for going through a .SVG's source code to find the right colours for a province section as with Sardinia.

If you don't like Atom, there are alternative editors such as Notepad++.

Eye Dropper
A neat open-source Chrome/Chromium extension that shows the colour of an entity. Also useful for region maps as I like to use the exact colour on the map as I think it's better for usability.

Croppola.com
A really useful site that allows images to be cropped in-browser regardless of operating system. I use Croppola to crop Wikivoyage banners to the 7:1 aspect ratio (see these examples: Tewkesbury, Paignton, Brixham, Chinon, Tintagel, Douglas, Laxey).

Translit.cc
Transliterates from Cyrillic to Latin and vice-versa.

GPS-Coordinates.net
''Note: I no longer use GPS-Coordinates because I find it cumbersome to use. Instead I zoom in and use the URL from Google Maps to provide co-ordinates.''

A really useful site that displays co-ordinates for any location using Google Maps. As someone who loves dynamic maps, this site is really helpful for generating the markers that are placed on them.

Sandbox
I use this sandbox area to test new ideas.

Routebox for the UK – Rail links
As the Network Rail logo isn't public domain or CC licensed, one needs to figure out how to call the logo's SVG from Wikipedia directly instead of the Commons.

Routebox for the UK – A40
For Cheltenham and other destinations along the A40.

Routebox for the UK – M5
For Taunton and other destinations along the M5.

Exeter
THIS HAS BEEN DONE ALREADY!

Routebox for the UK – London Underground
Needs a white background on the roundel to be seen clearly. Although the flat line works well too.