User talk:EvanProdromou/Nov 2004

See also User talk:(WT-en) Evan/Archives

Spock
I sent you an e-mail, but not reply. Do I have to ask some arcane Wikivoyage question, like "I've come up with a currency conversion function that takes an automatic feed from Reuters an allows travelers in realtime to be able to guage fair currency conversion rates (bid and offer levels). What do you think?" Or perhaps I'll just scream and wave my hands--which is hard to do while your zipping you son into his spiderman costume.

Portuguese WikiTravel?
Hi Evan, anybody start the WikiTravel in portuguese? I would like to create one here. What you think?

Regards (WT-en) Paulino Michelazzo


 * I think it sounds great. You should check out our Project:Language version policy. We have a Project:Portuguese Wikivoyage Expedition started up already, I believe. We need to translate the interface files; I can set that up soon. --(WT-en) Evan 14:39, 20 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * So.. we need anything more to do this? (WT-en) Paulino Michelazzo


 * Two things: choose a go-between, and get the interface file fixed. See Project:Portuguese Wikivoyage Expedition. --(WT-en) Evan 09:26, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)

IvyMedia
Moved to Talk:New York (city) by (WT-en) Evan

check your e-mail,pls

Template:Country Quickbar
Evan thanks for the comment, I made Template:Country Quickbar and usage at User:(WT-en) Bijee/India, let me know is ok to use it, (talk at Travellers' pub) -(WT-en) Bijee 20:04, 3 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * Yeah, that's really not OK with me. I really hate templates. I'll get started on the Project:template policy soon. --(WT-en) Evan 21:48, 3 Nov 2004 (EST)

Swedish Wikipedia sysop status
Hey Evan, I will be more or less inactive overall as a wiki user during the winter (november - mars/april in Sweden), because of work. Thus, we would like you to appoint yet another sysop for the Swedish language version of Wikivoyage (see Wikivoyage:Begäran_om_administratörskap for votum). We have suggested (WT-sv) Väsk as our second admin. --(WT-en) Alers 05:15, 8 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * Done! --(WT-en) Evan 20:49, 8 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * Thanks! --(WT-en) Alers 03:51, 9 Nov 2004 (EST)

Sysops on German Wikivoyage
Evan, during the last two weeks, we have been growing by almost 50 new articles per week. We have about 100 edits per day. I'm looking for other contributors to become admins, since only one admin with sysop flag turned on is much too less. Please remember how many admins there had been on en: at a simular state of development and traffic. Imagine what would happen if there was a bot driven spam attac against de: and you or I are not reachable. And not at least, don't forget that I only have agreed to be temporary go-between. We definitely need two or three more sysops. Please let me know that we can count on your support. -- (WT-en) Hansm 15:27, 2004 Nov 9 (EST)


 * So, I'm kind of trying to brainstorm to think what we can do to get this situation under control. First, let's try to encourage Wikivoyagers on the other language versions who are familiar with our way of doing things and even glancingly conversant in German to sign up on de: and scan recent changes.


 * Second, do you think there are any tasks that non-German speakers could try to take on (for example, welcoming new users, or adding templates to articles)? We can always try to scan for obviously unwanted edits, too. I'm worried that this might backfire -- over-eager non-German speakers might remove valuable information and not be able to explain why.


 * Third, do you really need administrators? We just don't use our super-admin-powers on en: that much, so I'm not sure why you'd need them on de:. Are you using yours a lot? Anyways, if you have some people who should be administrators, I can wave the wand over their heads to do it. However, IWBNI those people had Wikivoyage experience and had been voted on. I can understand if you need some "emergency" admins, though.


 * Finally: if you get swamped on de:, we can have another person become go-between, or if no one will do it, we can temporarily shut down the site. If you're not having fun and you're not getting support from the other members of the de: community, you don't have to carry the whole site. --(WT-en) Evan 16:36, 9 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * I just want to know one thing: Are you willed to switch on the sysop flag for other de: admins or not? -- (WT-en) Hansm 17:26, 2004 Nov 9 (EST)


 * Oh. Yes, of course! You're the go-between, you tell me who to switch on. --(WT-en) Evan 17:35, 9 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * Thank you, Evan. It's still too early to tell you names, I first want to get to know people better on de: and get an impression about who would be the right ones. It was just a question to be sure that I can offer them the sysop status if they would like to become admin. -- (WT-en) Hansm 01:28, 2004 Nov 10 (EST)

Links to hotel-listing sites
Hi Evan,

I only thought it best when entering the link to www.safarinow.com into the African sites of the directory. I always found it very helpful to have a big collection of places when going somewhere. Especially places like Cape Town where there are hundreds of hotels, B&Bs... to go.

Regards,

Felix

Felix,

The problem seems to be, if you add safarinow.com, then why not wheretostay.co.za, sleeping-out.co.za, and all the other web sites listing accommodation. You'll end up with a mess. And I think Wikivoyage should not be advertising commercial sites, which these are. Finally, all these sites are easily googled.

Regards

Caligo

Edit-Toolbar, Time and Templates on de:
The flood wave on de: seems to abate and the ship slowly moves towards a good course in regard to structure and MoS. Three questions:
 * Some new contributors had been confused since they didn't find the toolbar in top of the edit window as they were used from WP. It took them a while to understand that they can turn it on in their preferences. Would it be possible to turn it on by default?
 * I've just turned it on by default on de:. Hopefully that's what you're looking for!
 * The vaste majority of German speaking people lives in coutries in the UTC+1 (UTC+2 in summer time) time zone. Is there a way to use this time zone as default on de:? It would improve readability if the time you see in the "recent changes" and the time of signing with ~ would be the same time zone. At present, the time of signing ist EST, even if the time in the preferences is set to UTC+1.
 * I had problems setting this for sv:, but I think we eventually got it worked out. I set the default timezone to "CET". Does that work correctly?
 * (WT-de) User:Huebi as worked on a template with parameters that produces the Quick Facts box for coutry articles, see the source for de:Italien as an example. Huebi argues, that this would seperate the actual content in a more lucid way from control commands. My concerns are, that we maybe get somewhat fixed on his template and lose our Neutrality of medium. At the other hand, it would be realy easy to read out the content and process it in a more appropriate way if we want, for example, use our work for a printed book. I'm quite double-minded about that. Could you have a look on it and give a statement. -- (WT-en) Hansm 06:23, 2004 Nov 13 (EST)
 * We have some stuff about this at Project:template policy. I'm really dubious about them and would prefer to only use templates for "throw-away" content, and preferably just for process stuff like the stub or disambiguation statement. But other people have other ideas. --(WT-en) Evan 23:26, 18 Nov 2004 (EST)

Copyleft
I responded to your comments at User talk:(WT-en) Ram-Man. -- (WT-en) Ram-Man 16:12, 17 Nov 2004 (EST)

Italian Language
Hi Evan, I don't see any work in progress for the Italian language version, I think would be nice to make an Italian version of WikiTravel, if for you is fine I could manage to start this new project.


 * &rarr; Project:Italian Wikivoyage Expedition (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:49, 18 Nov 2004 (EST)

Bug
Hello Evan, there's a bug on swedish Wikivoyage: once you've logged in it's impossible to log out. But overall I can't see any mayor problems :-) (WT-en) Väsk 14:24, 19 Nov 2004 (EST)
 * Oh, it seems to work now :-) Now there's no problem (depsite that my user name displays as 'V%C3%A4sk' instead of 'Väsk') (WT-en) Väsk 14:26, 19 Nov 2004 (EST)

More bugs
Hi Evan, I'm leaving this here because I can't access the Bug reports page. In fact, there's a ton of errors since the move to the new 404 caching system. I can't access user preferences, various pages (including the bug reports page), and for some reason when browsing in Firefox I can't edit any page (but IE works). All I get is this error:


 * [filenotfound: message=".pt not found" code=0 mode=return level=notice prefix="" info=""]

Help! (Nickpest) -141.158.241.122 14:35, 19 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * The new code is acting poorly for people who had non-monobook skins selected. I've made a correction of changing the database so each person's preferences are now reset to monobook, which should fix it for now. I'm going to be fixing the software, also, over the next couple of hours.


 * Sorry for the hassle! --(WT-en) Evan 16:39, 19 Nov 2004 (EST)

Been away
Evan, I've put a note on my user page. Basically, I went away for a while, got a bug and got damn sick but I'm almost back to fighting strength! And where I was there is no elctricity so no Internet! My apologies for not getting back to you sooner.

On another point, there is something wierd with the session timeout. If I login and leave my screen for a while, the session used to timeout. If I hit "Ctrl F5", then the "log out" at the top would change to "log in" so I would know to login. What happens now is that when I hit "Ctrl F5", and watch closely the screen shows "login" and then quickly switches to "log out". So it appears that I am logged in but am not. If I look at my watchlist e.g., there is nothing. --(WT-en) Nzpcmad 19:21, 21 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * Yeah. You should check out Project:12 November 2004. I had to implement a caching system based on static files on the server. It works well, but because it's serving the same static files for everyone, there's some difficulties in indicating whether you're logged in or not. I added some funky Javascript that checks your login cookie, but apparently the cookie doesn't die at the same time as your login session. I'm going to try to debug this further. --(WT-en) Evan 21:17, 21 Nov 2004 (EST)

Foo
test save

Have a look, say your opinion and what you want - it's your project
http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/article/Talk:Hospitality_exchange


 * I've been watching the discussion unfold there, and if I have anything to say, I'll add it -- thanks. Also, it's not "my" project. I don't watch every single page on the site, and I don't get involved with every single discussion. Finally, it's a lot easier just to write Talk:Hospitality exchange. --(WT-en) Evan 13:23, 6 Dec 2004 (EST)
 * Thanks. Sometimes is a objective opinion from a outsider essential and for some people needs to be one with good reputation. xxx

Thanks!
I know it must have been an awful week for you guys as you dealt with this, so I just wanted to say thank you again for perservering through the mess. -- (WT-en) Mark 20:26, 25 Nov 2004 (EST)

That's a big ditto from me - thanks for standing in the gap! (WT-en) Pjamescowie 20:43, 25 Nov 2004 (EST)

Thank you very much Evan for all the work you've done this week ! -(WT-en) Quirk 09:19, 26 Nov 2004 (EST)

Thanks not just for bringing Wikivoyage back on line, but for (inadvertently) forcing some of us to take a break from our addiction! Cold turkey indeed! -- (WT-en) Paul Richter 10:39, 26 Nov 2004 (EST)

Me too. Are you planning on collecting donations to pay for all this? I'd be glad to chip in. (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:51, 26 Nov 2004 (EST)

Thanks! And I also would like to see a way to send donations for all this. You've been shouldering the bill yourselves for too long, I suspect. -- (WT-en) Colin 00:32, 27 Nov 2004 (EST)

Housing in Montreal
Hey Evan, this isn't quite a Wikivoyage topic. :) My sister is moving to Montreal for a co-op in January, I wonder if you could give me some tips on the housing market.

Is the market tight? Should she sort it out before before she arrives? She's looking for something close to the Metro. Which neighbourhoods near the Metro should she stay out of?

If you got any ideas, I'd be happy to hear them. --(WT-en) Dawnview 01:39, 7 Dec 2004 (EST)


 * Sure. You're right that it's not Wikivoyage-related, but: I think the key thing for anglophones is to learn enough French that you can read the French-language rental ads. The ads in the English-language newspapers are slim, and they concentrate on anglophone areas of town, which tend to be more expensive. I've found a couple of apartments here, usually through the Journal de Montreal or the free weekly Voir. But there are two other French dailies (La Presse and Le Devoir) and another weekly (Ici, with weak housing listings).


 * For neighborhoods, check the map. The farther "south" (towards the St. Laurent), the better chance of being near the metro. The closer to the Old Town, the better the neighborhoods are... up until you actually get downtown. Really, the only scuzzy part of town is on the Ste Catherine corridor from, say, de Lorimier up to University. Most young people tend to stay in N.D.G. (anglophone), the Plateau (francophone), St. Henri (mixed), Hochelaga (really francophone).


 * Finally, tell her to call us when she gets to town and stop by for dinner! --(WT-en) Evan 09:53, 7 Dec 2004 (EST)