User talk:Bill-on-the-Hill/2005

Welcome
Hello Bill-on-the-Hill! Thanks for your work on Bandelier National Monument - for a first article it's coming along really well. You seem to have a solid grasp of how things work on Wikivoyage, but here's the boilerplate welcome anyhow:

Welcome to Wikivoyage. Thanks for plunging forward so far. If you're going to continue working on Wikivoyage, you may find the tips for new contributors helpful. You should also make sure you understand our copyleft and policies and guidelines. 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 or on the talk page for the most appropriate article.

Thanks again! The United States National Parks are slowly but surely filling out. -- (WT-en) Ryan 21:37, 23 Aug 2005 (EDT)

El Malpais
And now it's my turn to request feedback! I spent just a few days at El Malpais National Monument back in March and then put together an article which is barely more than a stub. Not sure if you're very familiar with that park, but if you have any feedback or anything to add to the article it would be much appreciated! -- (WT-en) Wrh2 01:56, 26 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Thanks
Awesome Los Alamos work-- I need to go there!


 * Ditto on Carlsbad Caverns National Park. There were a few things that I meant to add, but at this point you've pretty much covered everything.  Great job! -- (WT-en) Ryan 01:32, 7 Sep 2005 (EDT)


 * Further kudos on some of your recent additions, including Santa Fe (New Mexico) and Santa Fe National Forest. If you can find photos for any of these then they are all fast becoming Project:Destination of the Month candidates.  Many thanks for your work! -- (WT-en) Ryan 02:38, 28 Sep 2005 (EDT)

On Wheels
Regarding your comment on User:(WT-en) Jpatokal's talk page, he was reverting page moves by User:(WT-en) Willy on Wheels! (or one of his many sock-puppets). The guy shows up occasionally, moves pages for a few hours, and then disappears. Kind of a weird hobby, but it seems to make him happy so we pretty much just let him do want he wants and then clean up afterwards. -- (WT-en) Ryan 18:35, 1 Nov 2005 (EST)

Hotels
Hi Bill. We've had a few hotel chains add info to wikivoyage in the past -- and we're okay with that. They often need to have the marketese stripped out and other stuff. The guy who edited Albuquerque, for example, edited a bunch of other articles where he put entries for outlying cities into the main regional city where it's more likely to be seen -- that's not okay. Other chains have put in Search Optimization where they link to their website with a phrase like "fort lauderdale beach hotel" rather than their own name in order to affect how Google behaves when searching for "fort lauderdale beach hotel." (Google's bots notice the phrases used for linking as an aid to categorizing the site).

But on the whole, we want the info. It just needs to be edited into shape. Looking up hotel listings in a phone book is generally a lot harder than editing a contributed hotel listing into shape.

Hotelmaker, by the way, only scrapes facts from hotel websites, not opinions. Facts can't be copyrighted, so they tend to be fair game under Copyright law. Plus, as you note, we don't want to allow marketing to infect listings. Thanks for your work! -- (WT-en) Colin 21:34, 8 Nov 2005 (EST)

Mount Bromo
Thanks for the accolades. Both pictures were taken from "Viewpoint #2", and I've now added a note about this. And yes, it really is very easy to get shots like that, provided you're willing to make the hike at dawn when the air is most likely to be clear. At the time of our visit Mt. Semeru was spitting out rather scary-looking mini-Hiroshima mushroom clouds every 10-15 minutes; if you look at the 2nd pic carefully, you can see two of these being pushed to the right by the wind. (WT-en) Jpatokal 20:06, 4 Dec 2005 (EST)

Articles needing attention
Thanks for adding all of my recent cleanups to the appropriate "articles needing attention" list. I used to try to keep the Project:Stubs needing attention article up to date, but it seemed a bit of a hopeless task and I never used the thing, so I guess I've gotten a bit lazy and disillusioned. I'll have to either do better or else try to dream up with some way to create a more automated list. -- (WT-en) Ryan 20:15, 17 Dec 2005 (EST)

Happy Birthday!
+ Merry Christmas + Super 2006! (WT-en) Rmx 11:16, 24 Dec 2005 (EST)

Bloomington-Normal
Hi Bill, Sorry I haven't gotten around to working on the Bloomington-Normal article. I had intended to, but have been distracted by some other projects. Thanks for getting started on it (I intend to make a map for it, and for Santa Fe (New Mexico) as well. -- (WT-en) Mark 09:33, 29 Dec 2005 (EST)

Illinois
Hey, Bill. I think you got some things wrong with Illinois regions; see Talk:Illinois. --(WT-en) Evan 12:22, 29 Dec 2005 (EST)