User talk:(WT-en) Stephen

Hello! Welcome to Wikivoyage. Please take a sec to look at our copyleft and policies and guidelines, but feel free to plunge forward and edit some pages. Scanning the Manual of style, especially the article templates, can give you a good idea of how we like articles formatted. If you need help, check out Project:Help, and if you need some info not on there, post a message in the travellers' pub.

Thank you for contributing to New Zealand. One way of looking at this issue is that it is a lot of work being a web directory and deciding which links to include or not include. And all that web directory effort is time taken away from writing a good travel guide. So we link to the Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.org and let them handle being a web directory and us handle being a travel guide. No doubt you have made a fine travel guide for the high-end traveller; we encourage you to seek inclusion in Dmoz instead of here. You're correct that the a hostel directory is also counter to the guidelines; feel free to plunge forward and correct that. -- (WT-en) Colin 23:12, 15 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Hi Colin,

I hope you pick this up, or should I answer you in your own Talk section?

Thanks for the explanation but could I offer a consequence...?

In your Non-Goals, it states that you don't want to Build a Web directory. And goes on to say, "Wikivoyage articles can and should have links to external resources about destinations, itineraries, travel-oriented companies, and other travel-related Web sites. However, it's not a goal to collect all links about any destination. External links should support and complement the content of articles; they're not a goal in and of themselves."

I agree. Which is why I'm here in the first place... :-)

But by not allowing me, or anyone else for that matter, to put a small amount of information from my site into WikiTravel and then provide a link so that readers can follow it and make bookings and so on, you are actually discouraging me from putting anything into WikiTravel. In effect, you're saying to me that I have to put my entire site into WikiTravel which, for obvious reasons, I wouldn't like to do... ;-)

Is there a way forward?

Cheers, Stephen


 * You can respond either on your own talk page or mine. People do it both ways.  Leaving a note on my talk page sure helps make sure I see your response though.  Thanks.


 * The goals and non goals is pretty terse. The main point there is "we are not a web directory even though we have certain types of links."  The External links policy is the more complete discussion of the issue.  Basically, if you were to add a hotel, a link to the hotel's web site is appropriate (though the phone number and address are more important so that the material works when printed out too).  If you were to be a promoter, and get money from various hotels by adding them into wikivoyage, that'd probably be okay -- though of course the hotels are free to add themselves.  If you have convinced a particular hotel to let you be their website operator, then you would also be free to add an entry for that hotel with a link to the hotel's website that you host.  But not just a webdirectory or a travel guide -- even a travel guide with limited audience.  The external link policy is pretty clear about that.


 * As for putting your entire site in, we certainly do not require any such thing. You may put in what you like, so long as what you put in conforms to the policy we have come to a consensus on.  Also, be aware that you can copy our stuff if that suits you even without contributing all of your stuff to us (see Project:How to re-use Wikivoyage guides). -- (WT-en) Colin 00:18, 16 Aug 2005 (EDT)


 * Hi Colin,


 * Thanks for the explanation. Just so I understand, is it correct that I could do this? I've altered the Sleep section of New Zealand again - haven't yet worked out how to link to it from here...


 * Cheers,
 * Stephen


 * Stephen, you're close. We put accommodation listings in the article for the city they're in; in this case, Auckland. Also, we only use the primary Web site for a listing; since Aachen House has its own Web site we use that one for the link. You can see an example in Auckland. --(WT-en) Evan 08:08, 16 Aug 2005 (EDT)


 * Hi Evan. Thanks for the clarification. I'd just like to explain what impact this has on potential contributors such as myself. By not allowing a link to a site that already contains much of the information you could use here, and the licensing that is implicit, it creates a disincentive to contribute. As a site owner, I'd be happy to give up some text/knowledge for the benefit of Wikivoyage but the web works on incoming links and if I can't even get that, I don't see any benefit.


 * I trust you understand the point of view I'm expressing. I think that Wikivoyage is a great idea but the flow needs to go both ways.


 * Cheers, Stephen


 * I understand, but I also think that the evidence proves that the desire to share information with other travellers, and to create interesting and worthwhile travel guides, is all the incentive that people need to work on Wikivoyage. We've had tens of thousands of contributors with our current extlink policy, and I think most of them agree that the traveller comes first. I'm sorry that you can't see any benefit to working on this free project without some sort of quid pro quo, but that's your prerogative. --(WT-en) Evan 09:56, 21 Aug 2005 (EDT)


 * Thanks. It's not that I don't consider that the traveller comes first or that I don't have the desire to share information with other travellers. Not at all. My entire site is based on that. The issue is more that I run a business that contains content that could be useful for you. But in not being able to link to my site in the context of an article, in which I'm giving up copyright, I'm actually bypassing my own activity. And that just doesn't make any sense to me... ;-) In this sense, we are direct competitors, each seeking to become THE reference point for travellers. And that's good. It'll keep us both on our toes. Cheers, Stephen