Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub/2012

Navigation at the bottom?
Err.. am I the only one not seeing the sidebar, as it's placed all the way at the bottom of the page? (WT-en) Justme 14:12, 19 January 2012 (EST)
 * Incompatibility between latest firefox and this version of mediawiki.  --(WT-en) Inas 16:07, 19 January 2012 (EST)
 * Oh :-( thanks... (WT-en) Justme 18:42, 19 January 2012 (EST)
 * I gave an explanation of this failure (Rendering failure with Firefox 9.0.1 above) and a solution some days ago. Nothing was done. The problem is to solved by IB. --(WT-en) Unger 09:15, 20 January 2012 (EST)
 * Did you report it on Shared? (WT-en) LtPowers 14:57, 20 January 2012 (EST)
 * Appears this issue will resolve with the MW upgrade, which is in progress.--(WT-en) IBobi 19:08, 20 January 2012 (EST)

Never resolved, but I just updated to Firefox 10.0 and WT appears normal again. (WT-en) AHeneen 15:48, 4 February 2012 (EST)

Wikivoyage sucks
So slow for the past couple of days. A couple of attempts at editing, and then give up for the day. --(WT-en) Inas 22:40, 19 January 2012 (EST)


 * Everything might be (possibly) fixed by the Mediawiki upgrade scheduled for September 2011 November 2011 some time in 2012/2013.  In the mean time it seems frustration will be rampant... -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 22:56, 19 January 2012 (EST)
 * Investigating the performance issue -- thank you for reporting.--(WT-en) IBobi 19:10, 20 January 2012 (EST)
 * Please report if there are still performance issues today; we had a bad crawler last week that may have slowed the site.--(WT-en) IBobi 14:04, 23 January 2012 (EST)
 * I still get frequent delays loading pages, though it usually speeds up as my session goes on. (WT-en) LtPowers 16:56, 23 January 2012 (EST)

Adequate attribution?
I could swear I posted this here last night, but I can't find any trace of it...

Anyway, just asking because I'm not sure, but is this use of our image properly attributed? It makes no mention of the creative commons license, etc. (WT-en) texugo 15:57, 25 January 2012 (EST)

Today's outage
We had an unplanned outage for several hours today due to a database malfunction. Site should now be behaving as normal; thank you for being patient while we resolved this.--(WT-en) IBobi 17:45, 25 January 2012 (EST)


 * Are you talking about these kinds of weird error messages, such as this one in the Kerch guide (the same one that was in the Johor Bahru guide before I did a hard edit to the previous version):

The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "(fixme, bug)".

This is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted.

If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.


 * (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 04:21, 26 January 2012 (EST)


 * He's probably also referring to the "Wikivoyage has a problem, try again in a few minutes" message that I got most of the day, yesterday. For the record, today the site seems to be very slow, but functioning. (WT-en) Justme 07:18, 26 January 2012 (EST)

The site appears to have become so slow over the last few days that it is now virtually unusable. It is near impossible to load a page, preview and edit or render an edit upload. Whats happened, rats chewed into the cabling? -- (WT-en) felix 09:54, 16 February 2012 (EST)


 * Hey Felix -- I'll have performance check with tech. Would you be interested in participating in the beta testing of the new Mediawiki upgrade?--(WT-en) IBobi 15:50, 16 February 2012 (EST)
 * Hi iBobi, will I need to have any needles stuck into me or take any tablets? If not then let me know the details and lets see if I can assist by participating. -- (WT-en) felix 18:08, 17 February 2012 (EST)
 * Just email me at paul.obrien at internetbrands.com and we'll get you fixed up with testing credentials.--(WT-en) IBobi 19:54, 17 February 2012 (EST)

Seeraa, the user and the Chinese website
Hi, everyone. I would like you to please read the exchange at User talk:(WT-en) Seeraa and also have a look at and. User Seeraa is some informative edits (unless they are copyvio, and except where they're merely added links to the seeraa portal), and I don't want to chase him/her away, but if the website in question really is in any sense official, why does not mention that? How should we handle this situation? (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 03:58, 3 February 2012 (EST)
 * Ikan, their homepage say they are a non-profit organisation. I think their xl linking to diverse places like Lhasa and Hangzhou looks a bit touty for me. I accept if they work in their knowledge into Wikivoyage but the linking is to much. Especially in political sensitive cases like Tibet imho their link can't stay. (WT-en) Jc8136 04:06, 3 February 2012 (EST)

Beta testing Mediawiki 1.17 upgrade
Having addressed the first round of bug reports from the Mediawiki upgrade beta test server, we're currently underway on a final round of testing before the new version of Wikivoyage goes live in a few weeks. We'd love to have your input, so if you are interested in participating in the beta, email me at paul.obrien at internetbrands.com for testing credentials and instructions. Thanks!--(WT-en) IBobi 18:55, 21 February 2012 (EST)


 * Nice to hear that it's coming along :-) Just a question though.. why not upgrade to the latest version? 1.18 has been released a while back already and Wikipedia in fact is deploying even 1.19 this week. Isn't it strange to start with a backlog? (WT-en) Justme 06:22, 22 February 2012 (EST)


 * It would be great to upgrade to the most recent version; but as you can see, they release small updates quite frequently, and upgrading a site as big as WT is a long process -- one that began prior to the release of 1.18 in November -- thus, we're finishing the upgrade to the version that was out at the time, 1.17. At any rate, it will not be as long between upgrades as it has been since the last one.--(WT-en) IBobi 14:40, 22 February 2012 (EST)

Outage
Wikivoyage was down for a while this morning due to an unscheduled data backup. If you see any unusual performance issues today, please let me know. Thank you --(WT-en) IBobi 17:11, 23 February 2012 (EST)
 * Site is going down for a few minutes for DB maintenance. Thanks --(WT-en) IBobi 18:16, 23 February 2012 (EST)

Outage today
There were a few hours today when the site was flapping up and down; it seems very stable now, but please report if you see any localized outages or ongoing issues with stability or access. Thanks!--(WT-en) IBobi 18:00, 1 March 2012 (EST)


 * Seems like it's back to its normal level of suck. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 21:28, 1 March 2012 (EST)

Booking tool & ad policy discussion
Please take a look at the proposed changes to ad policy and the general Booking Tool discussion taking place over the last couple of weeks -- and years -- over on Shared http://shared.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tech:Add_booking_tool_to_WT. As we approach implementation time on the booking tool as well as the Mediawiki upgrade, we'll be soliciting more feedback on look and feel as well, etc.

Also, if anyone is interested in participating in the ongoing Beta test of the Mediwiki upgrade, please contact me for credentials. Thank you.--(WT-en) IBobi 14:17, 5 March 2012 (EST)

Database upgrade complete
If you noticed many pages down this morning, it was due to the massive database upgrade we just completed. You should be seeing improved performance along with few to no errors when viewing, editing or posting content to Wikivoyage.

If you see site weirdness, pages missing, error messages, or generally anything else that could come from a DB upgrade, please let me know.

Next steps are the MW upgrade and Booking Tool! Thanks,--(WT-en) IBobi 17:18, 7 March 2012 (EST)

Wikivoyage suggestion
I've been on the search for a good video travel guide and I'm not sure if wikivoyage would be for or oppose the idea of making a universal video guide as well. Thoughts?--User:(WT-en) Themarcophoto 04:49, 11 March 2012 (EST)


 * Videos are discouraged per the image policy. If you see a strong reason for allowing videos you can make the case on that article's talk page. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 12:45, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

Password

 * Query: where do I go when I have forgotten my password?
 * I will sign with my IP I guess..
 * --81.68.73.34 15:17, 15 March 2012 (EDT)


 * Others may know better, but I'm not sure that this version of Mediawiki provides that capability (I don't see anything on Special:Specialpages and there is no Special:PasswordReset page). Your best option may be to just create a new account and leave a note on the user page indicating that you're the same user as whatever your old login was.  Alternately, IB will (hopefully) complete a Mediawiki upgrade in the coming month(s) that will enable the password reset page. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 12:55, 17 March 2012 (EDT)


 * On the login screen, there's a button that will send your password to the e-mail address specified in your preferences. If you didn't specify an e-mail address, you may be out of luck.  It seems like there ought to be something a bureaucrat could do, but I don't know what that is.  (WT-en) LtPowers 14:45, 17 March 2012 (EDT)


 * If that doesn't work, let me know. I do not have access to passwords, but I may be able to bend tech's ear about it; obviously we want established members to retain access to their existing accounts.


 * Incidentally, the MW upgrade Ryan refers to SHOULD (should) be live this week!--(WT-en) IBobi 16:18, 19 March 2012 (EDT)

Outage
We were down for about an hour. Back now and all is well.--(WT-en) IBobi 19:02, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

How long to update a revision so it appears in the browser?
Having just spent a number of hours revising, correcting, updating, adding or clarifying links for the Quime, Bolivia page I try and load it (after updating in Mozilla and IE) and it has reverted back to the original. I wonder if it just takes awhile for the moderators to approve the revision, if so how long? If it does take awhile for revision approval, maybe it could be posted in the FAQ so revisionists don´t get freaked out. If it has reverted, well I don´t understand why and am maybe a bit upset having wasted a few hours since IMO I improved and updated the page.


 * Look here - http://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Quime&curid=80685&diff=1842732&oldid=1825508 - at the editing comment and read the links I provided for you to understand why most of your edits to that page have been deleted. I'm sorry you feel like good work went down the drain. I appreciate your attitude, but you need to read the links I gave, and also tour, which is in part relevant to the reversion of your edits to the "Contact" section. Also, please sign talk pages by typing 4 tildes in a row before pressing the enter key. Thanks. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 19:38, 16 March 2012 (EDT)

Other guide books
I was just wondering if we could start adressing physical guide books. We could for example that we just state which books cover that general area etc... Is this something that would be helpful? We could also just say something about wether that book felt up to date or not...

(WT-en) Ptrk 13:36, 22 March 2012 (EDT)


 * Project:External links deals with this topic (short summary: references to other guides, either book or URL, are discouraged). That article's talk page has lengthy discussions explaining why this was done, proposals for change, etc. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 13:39, 22 March 2012 (EDT)

Credits?
At what point did the credits (example) cease to be displayed at the bottom of Wikivoyage articles? I always thought being able to see who had been working on the article recently was pretty cool (in addition to being an exemplary way of showing attribution). Without this feature—even so much as a link to it—we are no longer keeping our promise to attribute users' real names, for those who have chosen said manner of attribution.

Did we have a discussion about this, or did IB just unilaterally change the way we attribute users' work? --(WT-en) Peter Talk 04:27, 11 April 2012 (EDT)


 * I'll look into it-- I know it was not a conscious decision, because we'd have discussed it with the community. May just be a glitch. Any idea how long it's been like that?--(WT-en) IBobi 14:07, 11 April 2012 (EDT)


 * OK, here is the 411 on attributions: the feature is recommended "OFF" by Mediawiki. We switched it off (sorry -- this did not come down through channels to me) and that was the major factor in improving the site's performance and speed last month. So, once the MW upgrade is live and stable, we can always try turning it on again, and see how it affects performance & decide if the hit is worth having the attributions.--(WT-en) IBobi 14:23, 11 April 2012 (EDT)


 * That makes sense, and site performance should be a top priority (It's taking just forever to post this message). I'll note, though, that this really is essential information to discuss with the community. Not even notifying us is a pretty huge misstep (not hurling this at you personally). I do think we should restore at least a link to the credits section of each article, though, e.g., Please see the "article credits" for author attribution. And I should point out that that link is generating a database error right now... --(WT-en) Peter Talk 17:13, 13 April 2012 (EDT)


 * I wonder if we could use javascript to hide the credits until the reader clicks the "[show]" button. Or if reducing the number of authors shown by default would improve performance.  (WT-en) LtPowers 20:11, 13 April 2012 (EDT)
 * We probably could, but What about users who (sensibly in my view) disable javascript for security reasons? (WT-en) Pashley 23:03, 14 April 2012 (EDT)


 * Sadly, I'm not well versed in the technical details, so I don't know if they'd see the credits by default or wouldn't see them at all. (WT-en) LtPowers 13:43, 15 April 2012 (EDT)


 * If the goal was to reduce performance impact the credits would not be seen by someone who did not have Javascript/Ajax enabled. Note, however, that this change would require a custom solution be developed and implemented by IB, so it seems unlikely to happen. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 13:59, 15 April 2012 (EDT)

Without speaking out of turn, I believe we'd have resources for something like that, as it does not sound like a huge deal. Right now we have two techs working on WM upgrade and the booking tool, and we have them specced to work on WT for quite a while after that's complete. Let's see how the MW update affects performance, turn attributions back on as-designed, and revisit.--(WT-en) IBobi 13:32, 16 April 2012 (EDT)


 * We're working on a solution to get attributions back on the pages with minimal performance impact; however, if we need to turn them back on now we can. It will probably slow edits back down considerably, and maybe reads too. We just want to be as above-board as possible that we're going to resolve this one way or the other, attributions are going to return to and stay on Wikivoyage, and our plan is to include them along with performance improvements under the new version of WM. But if the community prefers them to be on now, we can and will oblige without a problem. Fair enough?

The way that "table of contents" is displayed
Hi guys.

As a sysop of the French Wiktionary, I'm really interrested in the way tables of contents show up here.

Would any contributor please help me to understand how it works ? --(WT-en) ArséniureDeGallium 14:04, 23 April 2012 (EDT)


 * I believe (WT-en) Evan worked on it. He is no longer very active on this site, so best to contact him via his own website . --(WT-en) Peter Talk 16:10, 23 April 2012 (EDT)
 * Thanks. --(WT-en) ArséniureDeGallium 16:40, 23 April 2012 (EDT)

French Wikivoyage
I'm very concerned by the French version of this wiki : it seems that there is not anyone by there to ensure as a basic thing as ensuring that the pages about licenses describes the licence in the footnote. --(WT-en) ArséniureDeGallium 16:47, 23 April 2012 (EDT)
 * To my opinion, you should close Wikivoyage in French, it is dead in all ways to think about it. --(WT-en) ArséniureDeGallium 16:52, 23 April 2012 (EDT)


 * There appears to still be active users on French Wikivoyage, and fr:User:(WT-fr) Joelf is still active as an administrator. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 17:08, 23 April 2012 (EDT)
 * Sure. In fact, when saying that, I was hoping someone would explain me I was wrong. --(WT-en) ArséniureDeGallium 20:42, 23 April 2012 (EDT)

Changing time formats
An anonymous user changed all the times in the Tokyo article to 24-hour format. There's some logic behind that, since it's common in Japan to use 24-hour time in most public information displays... but if we were to follow that standard, wouldn't it be better done at a national level? Whichever way it goes, is this worth reverting? (WT-en) BigPeteB 09:49, 25 April 2012 (EDT)


 * See Project:Time and date formats for the official policy. The talk page for that article also has a fair amount of discussion on the subject. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 11:07, 25 April 2012 (EDT)

Pure grumbling
I had the day off, and was looking forward to putting some real work into the New Orleans articles, but was completely unable to load even the main page (timeouts). Special:Recentchanges makes it clear enough that this wasn't true for everyone. Why does this happen? --(WT-en) Peter Talk 03:58, 25 April 2012 (EDT)


 * Well it was true for ME for much of the day. We had some firewall issues and an actual fire on the roof of our building that made it impossible for most staff to come to work yesterday and address the other issues. Things are still getting back to normal, but at least WT is up & running. Please report any lingering weirdness that may have begun yesterday. Thanks,--(WT-en) IBobi 14:08, 25 April 2012 (EDT)


 * FYI you *may* be seeing more of this today; i don't know how performance looks from outside, but there are more network glitches running around today. Sorry about that -- we'll lock it down as soon as we can.--(WT-en) IBobi 18:13, 30 April 2012 (EDT)

French Wikivoyage pages for deletion
Hi, could someone speedily delete some of the pages on the French Wikivoyage pages for deletion? (WT-en) –sumone10154 14:01, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
 * Done. --(WT-en) Rein N. 19:01, 2 May 2012 (EDT)

Mediawiki upgrade scheduled for 06-June-2012
Site will be READ-ONLY for up to 2 days while the upgrade is occurring.

If there are edits you'd like to make, please do so asap.

When the new site comes online, it will be on new hardware as well. Bug reporting is available here:

http://shared.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tech:Upgrade_to_MediaWiki_1.17#1.17_UPGRADE_BUG_REPORTS

If for any reason you need to contact me, I can be reached on my Talk page or my email address paul.obrien at internetbrands.com. Thanks!--(WT-en) IBobi 14:07, 4 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Delayed until 06-June-2012--(WT-en) IBobi 19:11, 4 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Upgrade complete. Please report issues at http://shared.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tech:Upgrade_to_MediaWiki_1.17#1.17_UPGRADE_BUG_REPORTS--(WT-en) IBobi 19:02, 7 June 2012 (EDT)

Eratic readings since crash at 5. Juni 2012 in German Wikivoyage
Seit dem 7. Juni 2012 werden auf der Deutschen Seite von Wikivoyage Informationen zu Sehenswürdigkeiten, Gastronomie und Unterkünften nur noch zum Teil angezeigt. Auch die Darstellung am Beginn eines Artikels hat sich zum Nachteil verändert. Die Hauptseite hat einen aktuellen Stand vom 22. Juni 2011, also fast ein Jahr alt. Auch die Artikelinformationen sind veraltet. Interessierte neue Autoren springen sehr schnell ab und gehen zu Wikivoyage über. Dort werden sie herzlichst begrüßt und aufgenommen. Bei Wikivoyage werden sie von einen nicht mehr aktiven Administrator gefrustet, der ihre Beiträge ohne Begründung löscht, anstatt ihnen Hilfe anzubieten.

Man bekommt den Eindruck Wikivoyage ist gestorben und wird nicht mehr gepflegt. Es ist seit Januar 2012 kein aktiver Administrator mehr tätig. Die Wahl für neue Administratoren ist mangels Interesse gescheitert. Wie soll es weitergehen?

Please answer at the German Travellers' pub-Site. -- Knut 84.58.160.100 04:32, 8 June 2012 (EDT)

Upgrade to 1.17 complete
Hi all,

As you can see, we have completed the initial stage of the upgrade of the MediWiki software to v1.17, the most current version available when the upgrade began in November.

This has been an enormously complex endeavor, due to the huge size of the Wikivoyage database and high level of visitor activity, as well as Wikivoyage’s highly customized MediWiki version, consisting of a great many plugins.

The next phase is now in progress: bug reports and fixes. Inevitably in an upgrade of this size and complexity there will be bugs. They’ll be addressed as they are reported; the process started this morning.

Once we are convinced the new site is stable and fully functional, we’ll be able to tackle feature requests and bugs that were reported previously but that we could not address before the completion of the upgrade, and new feature requests that are just now available with this version of the software, such as InstantCommons. And now that the upgrade past 1.15 has been completed, future upgrades to 1.19 and beyond can and will be done in a far more efficient and timely manner.

Wikivoyage is now running on a completely new hardware platform. When the cacheing process is complete, we expect significant increases in performance and stability compared to the previous version of the site. We also have a larger and more experienced technical team to address the needs of the site.

What this amounts to is a Wikivoyage that is dramatically improved from a technical standpoint than it has been for the last few years. Coupled with the renewed community engagement between members and Wikivoyage’s steward, Internet Brands, we have a recipe for longterm success with the technical aspects of the site, the ability of administrators to patrol edits, bug reporting and resolution, ease of contribution by writers, and above all usability for travelers around the globe.

Wikivoyage would not be possible without the dedicated community of administrators and writers whose content and curation have made it the preeminent travel destination anywhere. We are very happy to have completed this hardware and software upgrade, and look forward to continuing to evolve the site, in partnership with this community, in the years to come.

We appreciate your patience and support during these last few months, as we have renewed our efforts to improve the site and energize the Wikivoyage community. And we thank you for all you have done, both before and during Internet Brands’ stewardship. With nearly 2 million edits to almost 80,000 pages; over 70,000 registered users; and 7 million monthly visitors, there has never been a travel resource like Wiktravel. It is massive. It is unique. And it’s getting better by the day.

--(WT-en) IBobi 21:36, 8 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I sincerely hope at least the bugs that affect security will be fixed within a few hours. If you don't have a safe new version of the software, isn't it better to prevent editing until you do? Yes, performance is a huge issue, but the inability to block spammers is untenable. If I can suggest something for the next upgrade: You need software that recognizes obvious spam, because depending on volunteers to manually delete spam and block spammers is not likely to withstand the efforts of more and more spambots. Thanks, and sorry if I sound peeved, but spammers have been operated unblocked for several days now. All the best, (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 05:29, 11 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Hi Ikan, I am told the first round of bug fixes will be deployed in the next 24 hours. We've been working on site stability over the days since the update, and I am working hard to ensure that spam remediation -- including blocking users -- is prioritized. We know the manual removal of new spam accounts is arduous in the wake of this upgrade, and it is much, much appreciated by everyone. If I hear anything sooner, I will update here. Thank you,--(WT-en) IBobi 13:09, 11 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Does anyone else have an opinion on locking edits until the user blocking feature can be restored?--(WT-en) IBobi 15:06, 11 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I think we've been able to keep up with the spambots thus far, but it should definitely be a priority to get user blocking working again before the end of the day - at present we would have limited ability to deal with high-volume vandals, for example, and it's inevitable that they'll show before long. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 15:48, 11 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Any update on bug fixes? It's been five days since the upgrade went live, so any info on when (for example) user blocking will again be working would be very useful. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 12:10, 13 June 2012 (EDT)


 * When the far more serious issues such as those above have been dealt with it would be good to see a longer edit summary window return, that new short one is quite frustrating. cheers -- (WT-en) felix 13:14, 13 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I think that is user-selectable, Felix?--(WT-en) IBobi 15:26, 13 June 2012 (EDT)
 * Hi iBobi, I cannot find any setting in the user prefs, is it somewhere else? -- cheers (WT-en) felix 22:38, 13 June 2012 (EDT)


 * First set of bug fixes are coming tomorrow a.m. (June 14), and will include blocking. Thanks for your patience and greater efforts at patrolling edits necessitated by this week-long tool outage!--(WT-en) IBobi 15:26, 13 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Lots of fake Ikan Kekek usernames just created: . Time to prevent all edits by new users, or just shut down Wikivoyage, period, right now. We won't like the results of allowing unblockable spammers and vandals to continue to run rampant, and we can wait till tomorrow (or whenever your bug fixes are actually operational) to start editing again. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 20:50, 13 June 2012 (EDT)
 * If this sort of thing is going to continue unabated then lock down editing access completely until proper administrative functionality is restored. The world will not stop turning if editing functions are missing for a while, it might irritate or alienate a few new or casual editors who might run up against an editing block, but that is better than having the whole thing turned into a time consuming spam riddled and vandalised mess.--(WT-en) felix 22:38, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

en: has been unbelievably slow the last couple of days, far more than other language versions.(WT-en) texugo 11:02, 14 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I agree that IB should lock editing on :en, except perhaps for admins, until blocking functionality is restored. That this hasn't been fixed yet is troubling, and it cannot wait.  --(WT-en) Peter Talk 11:15, 14 June 2012 (EDT)  Looks like blocking functionality is back, although I haven't tested other language versions. Loading the block page is slow as a Ghanaian cook, though.  --(WT-en) Peter Talk 11:44, 14 June 2012 (EDT)
 * Over on pt:, I'm starting to think that the spam blacklist isn't doing its job-- I put some domains in the list the other day, and I see today that they are still being allowed to be posted. Has anyone checked this here on en:? (WT-en) texugo 11:22, 14 June 2012 (EDT)
 * Blocking has started working on pt: too. (WT-en) texugo 12:30, 14 June 2012 (EDT)
 * It works on ru:, but many other things still do not-((( (WT-en) Atsirlin 15:33, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

Patrolling problems
I still am not able to mark many articles as patrolled. This is a problem that seems to randomly apply to some articles and not others, but it's been consistently a problem with perhaps 1/2 of unpatrolled articles at any given time since the update. What happens is that the articles show up in the "Recent changes" list as needing patrolling, but when I open them, there is no button to patrol them. That's not because anyone else has patrolled them: When I refresh the list, they still show up as unpatrolled. And if I edit them, the resulting version also shows up as unpatrolled in the "Recent changes" list but generally still does not have a patrol button when I open it. I am using Firefox 13.0.1 in a Windows XP environment, if that matters. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 18:25, 24 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Same thing here. I believe the "Mark as patrolled" button doesn't appear when there is more than one edit to the article. Opera 12 on XP. (WT-en) Jjtk 04:21, 25 June 2012 (EDT)


 * At least for administrators (but I thought for all registered users?), it should, and used to before the upgrade. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 04:40, 25 June 2012 (EDT)


 * It did, it broke after the upgrade. (WT-en) Jjtk 04:53, 25 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I haven't had any problem patrolling edits. (WT-en) LtPowers 11:42, 25 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Using "enhanced recent changes" from the preferences (which consolidates edits to the same article) I'm also unable to mark multiple edits as patrolled, although they can be patrolled singly. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 11:49, 25 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I've been using those enhanced changes. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 17:51, 25 June 2012 (EDT)

This is now fixed, so we can get back to the beat. I have noticed that, on occasion, the marked as patrolled link is hiding at the bottom right of the page (as with new pages). I don't know why, but it shouldn't be a big deal, if people know about it. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 13:55, 6 July 2012 (EDT)

Breadcrumb Navigation not working on fr:
Hi, thanks for the upgrade. However the breadcrumb navigation on fr: seems broken. It works on en: and nl: and I don't see any modification in Template:IsPartOf. Any idea? joelf
 * It seems fixed now. Thanks IB people! Joelf

OpenID not working
Also, login on en: using OpenID from fr: and URL fr:User:joelf doesn't seem to work either. Thanks for your help. joelf


 * Take a look at wts:WtTech:Upgrade_to_MediaWiki_1.17. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 14:44, 18 June 2012 (EDT)

cannot reach Shared
Shared seems to be completely down or something. I cannot reach it at all... (WT-en) texugo 10:23, 18 June 2012 (EDT)


 * And now I get this message when I try to reach an image page on Shared:
 * A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
 * (SQL query hidden)
 * from within function "LocalFile::upgradeRow". Database returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction (wikivoyagedb1-new)".
 * (WT-en) texugo 10:40, 18 June 2012 (EDT)


 * No problems here. Maybe it's fixed?  (WT-en) LtPowers 13:16, 18 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Now I can get to the Shared main page, after a considerable wait, but I still can't reach the page I want to change: []. (WT-en) texugo 13:50, 18 June 2012 (EDT)

Problems with the search/go function
There seems to be something wrong with the search function. No matter what I type in there the search result is always the same:

"No such special page You have requested an invalid special page. A list of valid special pages can be found at Special pages. Return to Main Page."

Has it something to do with the software update? (WT-en) Ypsilon 05:18, 26 June 2012 (EDT)
 * Ypsilon, you beat me on time ;-) I have the same problem and can't search for articles. (WT-en) Jc8136 05:27, 26 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I just had that problem while looking for UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Of course, when I clicked the list of Special pages, it wasn't there, yet I found it by going to an off-site web search. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 05:39, 26 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I emailed (WT-en) IBobi and started a bug report at Shared:Tech:Search/Go not working on en:. (WT-en) texugo 10:24, 26 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Go was working fine (that is, if you typed an article name exactly) until recently; I suspect they broke it when they were trying to fix Search. (WT-en) LtPowers 10:25, 26 June 2012 (EDT)


 * This is too important a problem to let readers sit in the dark about, so I have updated the SiteNotice to direct people to... Google. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 12:39, 26 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Nice move. I can't believe they won't even respond for something so important. Oh, wait.. yes, I can. (WT-en) texugo 12:48, 26 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I've reported this to our tech team. Please keep in mind that we are on the US West Coast and will generally be able to respond to issues according to that time zone difference; it's just morning here. Thank you,--(WT-en) IBobi 13:22, 26 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Now it's working again. Thanks! (WT-en) Ypsilon 07:18, 27 June 2012 (EDT)

Let's be clear. Go is working, but Search is still not working properly. Currently it does perform a search, but it spews forth every resulting page in its entirety in raw text form. Try searching for "New York" and see what I mean. (WT-en) texugo 10:12, 28 June 2012 (EDT)


 * What's the desired result for a search?--(WT-en) IBobi 13:43, 28 June 2012 (EDT)


 * It should return a list of results with only a 2-3 line excerpt of the article content (not including wiki markup) from the beginning of each result's article.(WT-en) texugo 13:52, 28 June 2012 (EDT)


 * My understanding is that this is the way MW 1.17 handles search results; it is fundamentally different from the old 1.11 version.--(WT-en) IBobi 15:44, 28 June 2012 (EDT)


 * OK, so we have altered the way search displays so that it is a small 2-3 line digest of each result; the raw code as part of the results is a different matter, and we're looking into it.--(WT-en) IBobi 16:12, 28 June 2012 (EDT)


 * FYI once we change this for all users, you can still go to your settings and go to the default setting if you want to see the full article in your search results.--(WT-en) IBobi 16:32, 28 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Can anyone verify that wiki markup ("raw text") was not displaying in the search results of the old version before the upgrade? Apparently the appearance of this markup is a bug with the MW software that they are aware of http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:SphinxSearch/Archive/2012#Search_Results_without_Wikicode.2FWiki_markup --(WT-en) IBobi 16:34, 28 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I may be mistaken about the part about not showing raw text. Another thing though, I do think that the search used to default to content pages only, not everything all mixed with talk pages, user pages, etc. Please compare with the search on pt:, where everything seems to be working as it did before. I cannot really imagine a situation in which a user would find it useful for the entire article to appear on the results page in one giant block like that. It's ugly and often requires one to scroll quite a bit between result listings.(WT-en) texugo 18:00, 28 June 2012 (EDT)

InstantCommons now enabled
Here's a bit of a bright spot in our messy upgrade: InstantCommons is enabled! This means you can add images from Commons to Wikivoyage articles without having to re-upload them here. All you need do is add a thumbnail as usual (e.g., ). It will then show up properly in the article, and will have a shadow page of sorts here (e.g., File:Wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery.jpg), analogous to how our software handles images from Shared.

To see this in action, check out Arlington (Virginia), to which I just added 10 Commons images, without the huge amount of work that used to entail! --(WT-en) Peter Talk 23:05, 26 June 2012 (EDT)
 * Awesome, super useful. Now, what is it that we don't have that allows one to directly display an .svg file on WP? If we had that functionality too, we could more easily import route icons without having to open them in Inkscape, save a .png, and upload it to Shared. Is that something we can get enabled here? (WT-en) texugo 23:27, 26 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Ooh, good point about route icons. (It will still be important to export maps to PNG, for the purpose of allowing translation layers within SVGs.) Yes, we have the capability, provided we can get IB to add two lines to the config file... The instructions are here, and I assume the renderer to use would be rsvg, as that is what the WMF projects all use.  --(WT-en) Peter Talk 00:35, 27 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Let me see what I can do.--(WT-en) IBobi 13:46, 27 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Should be done guys -- can you test?--(WT-en) IBobi 13:31, 28 June 2012 (EDT)
 * I'm not seeing any difference. When an .svg is put in an image tag, it simply shows the filename as a link, e.g. [[Image:Eden Center map.svg|100px]]. (WT-en) texugo 14:20, 28 June 2012 (EDT)
 * Well color me surprised! I assume our image use policies will not change as a result?  It might make it more difficult to enforce, though.  (WT-en) LtPowers 09:01, 27 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I suppose the main policies that will see changes are just about which files should be uploaded to Shared, and which to Commons. I think it is probably worth keeping our maps hierarchy separate. There also may be cases in which we want to use files locally that Commons doesn't consider free enough for global use (pictures of statues, for example). --(WT-en) Peter Talk 11:12, 27 June 2012 (EDT)

Are we using
I have seen this mark-up in a couple of articles today, are we using this image floating mark up here? -- (WT-en) felix 01:34, 27 June 2012 (EDT)


 * It's a bug with the listing editor, introduced some time today. See wts:WtTech:Listing editor adds TOC tag. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 02:54, 27 June 2012 (EDT)

Edited 1.17 upgrade bug reports to reflect fixes
I have edited the http://shared.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tech:Upgrade_to_MediaWiki_1.17#1.17_UPGRADE_BUG_REPORTS to reflect what's been fixed & what's pending, as well as a number of clarifications that are needed for tech.

You'll also notice a parenthetical number next to many of them e.g. "(175)" -- this refers to the internal technical problem report assigned to each and will help us track them.

If you see "Fixed" next to an issue you reported, please test it; if it's resolved, remove your bug from the list. If it is unresolved, please explain.--(WT-en) IBobi 15:22, 28 June 2012 (EDT)


 * We have addressed and fixed all bugs reported since the 1.17 upgrade. Please review any you have reported and if they are still occurring, report them on the upgrade page (and unmark them as "resolved" or "fixed") and we'll readress them.--(WT-en) IBobi 19:44, 10 July 2012 (EDT)

Shared down?
I currently can't seem to reach much of anything on Shared except the main page. Recent changes, the pub, random images, etc. all either time out or return a SQL error. What is going on there? (WT-en) texugo 15:43, 29 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Something is wrong. I got the database error (wts:WtTech:Database lock timeout) on the recent changes page a few minutes ago, but it seems to be working now.  The spider I run that attempts to keep a backup of images has been getting error responses on nearly every request (after ten minutes of waiting) since late last night. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 16:06, 29 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I have been editing Shared all day with no issues. There was a minor access blip on Shared and the regular site for a few minutes early this morning, but it's been fine since.--(WT-en) IBobi 19:08, 29 June 2012 (EDT)

semi-problem logging in
I seem to be able to log in, and when editing my changes are saved under my name, but while navigating it keeps saying "Log in / create account" in the upper right corner, instead of "Justme - My talk - My preferences" etc. As soon as I start editing I do see all those account-related options. Does anyone know why that is? (WT-en) Justme 12:09, 1 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Yup, chronic problems with caching. This particular problem has been around for, yikes, something like 5-6 years, but is rearing its ugly head a little extra post upgrade. IB claims to be looking into it, as you'll see here. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 13:38, 1 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Oh, I see. Hadn't encountered this specific bug yet. Thanks for the quick reply. (WT-en) Justme 14:12, 1 July 2012 (EDT)

Get Out is on the way out
Hi folks... if you haven't seen it, we've got a poll on options to change the name of our "Get out" sections to something less confusing. This will be a widespread change, so we want as much input as possible on it.

The discussion is at Project talk:Article templates. After you read the discussion, check out the poll at Project talk:Article templates. For each of the options listed in the table, if you would be willing to accept that option, sign just your name with three tildes in the second column, and increment the vote total in the rightmost column. If you are not willing to accept an option, simply don't sign in that row.

As of right now, "Go next" is acceptable to seven of the nine people who've voted, followed by "Move on" and "Onward" at five each.

-- (WT-en) LtPowers 15:07, 1 July 2012 (EDT)

Wikivoyage still glacially slow?
Does anyone else feel that the site is basically just as slow as before the MediaWiki upgrade? This is the one thing that I most hoped the upgrade would fix, but it seems to me that things load just as slowly as before, especially here on en:, where I get to wait 15 seconds or more for even important pages like Recent Changes. (WT-en) texugo 12:16, 3 July 2012 (EDT)


 * It took just over a minute to load the diff of your edit from the recent changes page for me. While the slowness could be due to any number of reasons, there was some suspect editing activity earlier today (see User talk:(WT-en) Pranavk) and there has been a known Linux issue affecting many, many servers since 30-June - see http://lwn.net/Articles/504657/ (that issue affected my home server and slowed it down massively).  No clue whether either of those issues have any relevance to the current problems on Wikivoyage, but something has definitely made things significantly slower lately. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 18:39, 3 July 2012 (EDT)


 * WT is running on a brand new set of servers, one of which was replaced shortly after the upgrade was complete. Today the replacement machine was down for a short period of time but all is well now. What sorts of read/edot speeds are you experiencing yourself?


 * Also FYI on Thursday 7/5/2012 we are switching to a new cacheing service that ought to result in improved overall performance (read & edit) and several bug fixes.--(WT-en) IBobi 19:14, 3 July 2012 (EDT)


 * WT remains slow espcially when loading pages or initally starting to access WT. It's better compared to yesterday but still pretty slow compared to history.(WT-en) Jc8136 09:10, 4 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Things have been faster for me by a factor of about ten since late yesterday afternoon. Prior to that I was seeing page load times of up to a minute and occasional timeouts. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 11:35, 4 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Wikivoyage is operating just as quickly, if not moreso, than Wikipedia for me. (WT-en) LtPowers 10:29, 4 July 2012 (EDT)
 * Agreed. Seems to have returned to normal here too. (WT-en) texugo 14:12, 4 July 2012 (EDT)

It's quiet, a little too quiet
Did I miss a holiday today or something? The only time I've seen so few edits in recentchanges has been on Christmas! --(WT-en) Peter Talk 23:05, 7 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Some of the more prodigious editors seem to be missing today. And the number of contributions seem to generally have been lower since the upgrade - some folks probably wandered off temporarily due to various upgrade bugs and should return as things stabilize. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 23:28, 7 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Maybe. It's weird though—I just patrolled the entire day's edits in 15 minutes. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 23:45, 7 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I suspect I'm not the only one who sees little point in working on WT while we wait for the hammer to drop... (WT-en) jpatokal 22:55, 9 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Regardless of outcomes, I still want things in good shape here. The fact that I cannot block bots or delete pages right now frustrates that desire. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 01:48, 10 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Am I the only one then, who repeatedly could not reach Wikivoyage, today and yesterday? I got the "Wikivoyage has a problem" message. Maybe others had the same. (WT-en) Justme 08:39, 10 July 2012 (EDT)


 * There were scattered outages yesterday due to the cacheing change reported on Shared. Are you still having trouble editing? I made an edit with no issue.--(WT-en) IBobi 14:53, 10 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I can edit with Chromium on the same PC, and Firefox on a different pc (same IP, different Firefox version), so I guess the issue is with Firefox 3.6.24? --(WT-en) Peter Talk 17:01, 10 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Sounds likely. I'm on FF 13.0.1, so it's just possible some new updates left your ancient version behind finally?--(WT-en) IBobi 17:06, 10 July 2012 (EDT)

Peter, tech recommends you remove ALL cookies and hard refresh; it may have cached something wonky. They're looking into potential conflicts with that FF version.--(WT-en) IBobi 17:26, 10 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I'm able to edit as normally as of this evening EST! --(WT-en) Peter Talk 18:42, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

Bugs, feature requests, and the future of Wikivoyage
Please view and comment on this section on Shared Bugs, feature requests, and the future of Wikivoyage.--(WT-en) IBobi 20:46, 10 July 2012 (EDT)

Thank you. --(WT-en) DavidCary 12:43, 21 July 2012 (EDT)

Lost discussion
I can't for the life of me find the discussion in which we were talking about having the ability to up/down-vote and to mark-as-correct listings, with a trusted class of reviewers and editors. Does anyone know what happened to it? --(WT-en) Peter Talk 16:25, 11 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I think that was Project:Business listings reliability Expedition. The discussions are mostly on the talk page. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 16:33, 11 July 2012 (EDT)

Support for email notification?
Please see Enable Email Verification and Notification and add your X to the Roadmap if you like it.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 19:58, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

Today, email notifications have been enabled. The feature defaults to "off" so you will not receive any until you switch it on and confirm your email in your User Profile.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 13:45, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

Spam Page
I'm moving a discussion from my talk page here to see if anyone else has seen these error messages or experience the same problem. Ryan also posted this to Project:How to handle unwanted edits. --- You're shown as the author of User:(WT-en) Chen47vk7, which is a spambot page. Any idea what's going on? Is this another upgrade bug? -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 16:09, 14 July 2012 (EDT)


 * When I tried logging in earlier, I got a message that (I think) said something about being prevented from logging in to prevent account being compromised or something like that. The time of those edits is about the time I logged in (or tried to). I'm on a public wi-fi network...maybe that has something to do with that? (WT-en) AHeneen 16:15, 14 July 2012 (EDT)


 * You're the second "normal" account I've seen today that had a spambot page created. It may be an upgrade bug, but if you see that message again can you copy it and add it to this thread? -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 17:01, 14 July 2012 (EDT)

Today after clicking the "log in" in the upper right, then entering my username & password and hitting enter, I got the screen at right. I think what I did on the 14th was re-enter my password at this screen, after which I got the message I mentioned about being compromised or something like that. This time I clicked the WT image in the top right to return to the homepage, where I was still "logged in" as this spambot (?). I just closed the window (my Firefox setting is to clear cookies when exiting) and came back to WT to log in...without incident. These two instances are the only two times I've ever seen this message...my browser should accept cookies. Using my home internet this time. Maybe this is a bug. (BTW:Message is in a grey box because I highlighted it to copy/paste, but then decided to capture a screenshot with the message still highlighted). (WT-en) AHeneen 05:49, 16 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I got the log in error message in the second screenshot when I tried to log in today...the same one I got the first time. Happened in the same way as the last two times: clicked on "log in" from WT homepage, entered by username & password on the following page and hit enter. Again, notice that I appear to be logged in as a spambot. This time I entered my password on this page and clicked "log in", but checking my "user contributions" it doesn't look like any spam edits have been made by my account. (WT-en) AHeneen 22:39, 16 July 2012 (EDT)


 * There was a bug fixed in Mediawiki 1.17.2 that apparently would allow a script running on your machine to "steal" session information - if you're on Windows, do you run a virus scanner? Otherwise you might want to try clearing cookies and see if the problem goes away.  Alternately, it's possible that a malicious Google ad or something similar could be stealing session info via the aforementioned bug.  For what it's worth I reported the problem to IB and requested that they upgrade to the latest bugfix release. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 22:58, 16 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I was adding another comment when you added yours. I do run a virus scanner and like I said in the first post, my browser setting are set to delete cookies when the browser is closed (just double-checked this). Should this be moved to the pub for others to comment on? So after making the last comment, I went to my watchlist to patrol recent edits and got the message shown in the third screenshot while making a couple edits. After logging back in, I checked my contributions, but no spam edits made by my account. Since the upgrade, I seem to get logged out of my account anywhere from 15-45 minutes after logging in (a rough guess) and this happened 20 minutes after logging in (based on difference between timestamps on the images' metadata). (WT-en) AHeneen 23:04, 16 July 2012 (EDT)


 * It probably wouldn't hurt to give this issue wider exposure in the Pub since it hasn't just been your account - I just deleted a spambot page credited to User:(WT-en) (WT-en) AndreCarrotflower. I've also raised this issue at Project:How to handle unwanted edits. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 00:15, 17 July 2012 (EDT)

--- So has anyone else seen this or seen these error messages? (WT-en) AHeneen 01:28, 17 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Yes, I was receiving them after last Monday's caching server upgrade (at least I think that's what it was), and received them July 9th-12th. I only received them in one browser on one computer (Firefox 3, Ubuntu 10.04). On the 13th I was able to edit again as normally. I didn't report on site because it was too much of a pain to edit! --(WT-en) Peter Talk 00:43, 18 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I've been getting these messages every time I've logged in since the 14th. Upgraded from Firefox 13 to 14.0.1 today (on Windows 7 SP1, for what it's worth), but that hasn't changed anything. Only the first time this happened were spam edits "made" by my account. (WT-en) AHeneen 02:12, 18 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I got it today for the first time. (WT-en) LtPowers 14:53, 18 July 2012 (EDT)


 * We are working to implement a security patch this week. Thank you all.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 15:10, 18 July 2012 (EDT)


 * No hurry, since you're a spambot yourself now. (Oh, the irony!) (WT-en) jpatokal 09:34, 24 July 2012 (EDT)
 * Jani, just placed the irony on IBobi's talk page. It would be ironic if it wouldn't kill Wikivoyage rather soon. It's really sad to see the project unfold on its own. If anyone needs arguments against IB, then we show this discussion. (WT-en) Jc8136 09:41, 24 July 2012 (EDT)

The MW 1.17.2 patch was deployed early this morning Pacific time. Please let me know as soon as possible if it has not addressed the spambot issue and the deletion problem. If earnest attention to and resolution of a MW software bug is an "argument against" the host, Jc, I really don't know what to tell you. A patch this size cannot be deployed hastily, lest the functionality of the site itself be jeopardized.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 13:20, 24 July 2012 (EDT)


 * When we have big problems affecting the integrity of the site, I think Wikivoyagers' patience with IB's business hours wanes. We work around the clock, around the globe to maintain some semblance of wikidignity on a site that is hard for me to even edit, still. It took around 5 minutes to load this page's history and then the diffs since my last visit just right now. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 18:00, 24 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Sorry it's been slow today, Peter; as I mentioned in earlier notes regarding the upgrade that occurred today, site speed will be slow because it's a patch to the entire site, which then requires some time for the cache to rebuild. This is a huge site, and there's no way around it. Upgrading takes a temporary toll on site speed -- it has nothing at all to do with it being IB that made the upgrade. It's a software bug with MediaWiki that we needed to resolve.


 * Some things just take time. It wasn't business hours that caused the week delay; it's our care in ensuring that the upgrade would be done well and would not compromise the site. We go from investigating the issue, to investigating a solution, to putting the solution on a staging server, testing it there, then putting it into production on the live site here. Hopefully you understand, and thank you for your help in reporting and resolving this.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 18:12, 24 July 2012 (EDT)


 * According to recent changes "I" have just created a new account called User:Rdidonato41... one of many probable spam accounts. And as I said on shared before, I still need to reload almost every page (half of the time not even that works, I have to go back one page and forwards again to get the page.) /insert swearing word of your choice/ (WT-en) Ypsilon 02:20, 30 July 2012 (EDT)

Cache was fully cleared yesterday (as you could see from slowness); this should have propagated all changes made since the patch last week. Please report if spambot spooling issue persists.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 18:09, 31 July 2012 (EDT) --- Was my account taken over? In the morning I couldn't edit and got a message that I was blocked for spamming. (WT-en) Jjtk 07:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
 * Same thing happened to me yesterday. I also noticed that Travellers' Pub was missing from the nav bar, and when I tried to edit a page, I got the message below...

You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reason: Your IP address has been automatically blocked because it was used by another user, who was blocked by Ikan Kekek. The reason given is this: Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by "Hdfs9f2qb". The reason given for Hdfs9f2qb's block is: "Spambot" •	Start of block: 08:49, 2 August 2012 •	Expiry of block: 08:49, 3 August 2012 •	Intended blockee: 10.17.32.138 You may contact Ikan Kekek or one of the other administrators to discuss the block. Note that you may not use the "e-mail this user" feature unless you have a valid e-mail address registered in your user preferences and you have not been blocked from using it. Your current IP address is 10.17.32.138, and the block ID is #10618. Please include all above details in any queries you make.
 * I was unable to email User:(WT-en) Ikan Kekek because my email address was no longer registered. When I tried to re-register, I got the following message...

Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
 * Good news is that I was allowed in again today, and able to re-register my email. (WT-en) Jnich99 01:32, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Editting on iOS?
I can't seem to edit pages when using my iOS device. Am I missing something? It seems to work fine when using Android... -- (WT-en) Tim 08:25, 17 July 2012 (EDT)


 * What issues are you having specifically? Have you been able to edit on iOS in the past, and only having the problem recently? It could be related to the recent MediaWiki upgrade. Personally, I can edit using my phone (HTC Windows Phone) (WT-en)  J ames A    >talk 08:30, 17 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I've not tried editing on iOS before so I'm not sure if it's a new thing or not. When viewing any page on either Safari or Chrome, after clicking to see normal versions of the pages (as opposed to mobile versions) it will show up the "edit" links - but then if I click on it, I get the edit page but back in the mobile version, but the wiki code isn't in a text box which you can edit. Hope that makes sense... -- (WT-en) Tim 09:01, 17 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Okay, so now it's kinda working now. I'm using Chrome on iOS and when trying to edit it still takes me back to the mobile version which is formatted differently and can't be edited. But with Chrome there's a "request desktop version" option which shows the normal desktop version of the page and allows you to edit as normal. It's still a bit of a hassle though. -- (WT-en) Tim 15:38, 17 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I have the same problem on Android as well. If you want to edit, you can't let the site know you are on a mobile device, otherwise it keeps flicking back to it.  --(WT-en) Inas 21:47, 17 July 2012 (EDT)

User page exists but user account not registered
I was going to blank and protect a User page that has been subject to numerous spam edits and deletions. When I went to edit it though, I got the following message:

"User account "xxxxx" is not registered. Please check if you want to edit/create this page."

Has anyone seen this message before? It seems odd that it recognizes the page as a user account but the account is not registered (and that my editing would register it). - (WT-en) Shaund 10:42, 21 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Editing the page would not register the user account; the warning is there because it is usually not desirable to create a page in the User: namespace without an attached account. (WT-en) LtPowers 14:21, 21 July 2012 (EDT)

How do I move pages?
How are pages moved? I tried to move Sigtuna to Sigtuna and Stockholm-Arlanda Airport, without result. Thanks in advance. /(WT-en) Blist 20:14, 22 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Moving pages appears to be broken at the moment, please see wts:WtTech:Move feature not working on en:. However, in that specific case, I would not move the page, as airports usually do not get their own articles; you could set up a redirect from Stockholm Airport or Stockholm-Arlanda Airport to Sigtuna instead.  — (WT-en) D. Guillaime 20:26, 22 July 2012 (EDT)


 * That's a thing to discuss at Talk:Stockholm. /(WT-en) Blist 14:10, 23 July 2012 (EDT)


 * So, is there any hope that the bug will get fixed? /(WT-en) Blist 19:13, 25 July 2012 (EDT)

The ability to move pages seems to have been restored as of July 31. (WT-en) Eco84 14:51, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

IB vs community decisions
All the admins on the Finnish Wikivoyage -- that would be me and fi:User:(WT-fi) Trsqr -- have decided to support the fork at Wikimedia and publish a sitenotice stating so. IB has reverted this three times now, as in IBobi's opinion "The host is responsible for the site, and has decided that the sitenotice is not to be used for that purpose and that purpose only."

So, I'd like IB to explain which Wikivoyage policy justifies this behavior, and I'd be most interested in hearing what other users think about the situation. (WT-en) jpatokal 07:06, 25 July 2012 (EDT)


 * That's probably a question best addressed on Shared, since it seems to be a site-wide contention. (WT-en) LtPowers 14:51, 25 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Agree with LtPowers. I think openly supporting a fork may be a step too far on a site notice, but linking to the discussion and asking for users' opinions is crucial I believe to achieve IBobi's desire of involving the whole community. (WT-en)  J ames A    >talk 08:47, 26 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I'm not interested in politics around here, but IB owns the site and rightfully has control over issues outside the "wiki" community rules. We don't allow links on destination pages to unofficial websites for destinations (even if they are good) or to guidebooks (which usually have much more content than our WT pages), so why should a link to a fork be posted in the sitenotice? The point is to add content to Wikivoyage, with the goal of having a "free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide"...not links to other sites for content. Linking to a fork goes against the basic rules/tenets/goals (whatever they're called) of Wikivoyage, which were agreed to a long time ago. Having these discussions should be allowed on talk pages or the pub, but placing the link in the site notice goes way too far. Just my two cents. (WT-en) AHeneen 01:38, 27 July 2012 (EDT)
 * AHeneen: IB only owns the Wikivoyage trademark and hosts the page. The content is not owned by IB as it is cc by sa. See how other pages uses our content. I'm very disappointed with the total lack of interest from IB in the well-being of this site. We have outstanding technical issues from 2009 that they didn't start to work on! I think the fork is needed to force IB to a decision that they either complete abandon that page or finally start to solve problems and not create new ones. The current handling of the spambot issue imho indicates that they are not interested in maintaing the page and that they willfully allow the content to be corrupted by spambots etc. In the interest to protect the content of thousands of users, we should develop a new page as fast as possible. Yes, the long discussed goals are strechted but either we go down in the current set or we try to set a basis for a new page with a host/owner that actually cares about the well-being of the page. (WT-en) Jc8136 04:49, 27 July 2012 (EDT)
 * Andrew: I don't believe anyone linked to the WMF discussion in the site notice; the contentious link is to a Travellers' Pub discussion, which ought to be perfectly allowable, don't you think? (WT-en) LtPowers 12:06, 27 July 2012 (EDT)
 * LtPowers -- the WMF link has appeared in the sitenotice more than once, and had to be reverted by me. In any event, linking the fork discussion on WT in the sitenotice, then linking from there to the WMF page serves the same purpose. Again, I prefer not to deal with this issue unilaterally -- and have never done so before -- but in the case of the misuse of the sitenotice, the needs of this site needed to be addressed. The sitenotice is for site issues, and in this case it is clearly differentiated from the project. If my reasoning is not agreed with, I hope it is at least understood; in conjunction with no clear consensus on changing the sitenotice, even from the WT admins, I consider this a settled issue. Thank you,--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 19:41, 27 July 2012 (EDT)
 * Having the discussion is ok. Putting a link to it in the site notice is not appropriate. I understand & agree with what IBobi has to say. (WT-en) AHeneen 21:48, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

Arctic and Traveling in cold weather
Started two new topics. I would appreciate contributions and cross-links. /(WT-en) Blist 14:53, 29 July 2012 (EDT)

Cache rebuilding today
We have deployed a code update that will require the site's cache to rebuild today, slowing performance until the cache is again whole. Usually this takes a day, give or take, with performance steadily increasing to pre-update levels. Early in this process, it's possible you will see a 503 error. Thank you--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 13:35, 30 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Not only have I seen a lot of 503 errors; I also keep getting the following error message when attempting to save text I wrote in a user's talk page that previously was empty:


 * Internal error


 * Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.


 * What is that junk, and why is that message being shown? The site is also slower than I've ever experienced other than times when it was impossible to edit at all. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 04:41, 1 August 2012 (EDT)


 * Which user page are you trying to write on? I can take a look and see if it can be reproduced; but today I am seeing site speed beginning to approach page loads of 3-4 seconds, and I have not seen that particular error.--(WT-en) IBobi talk email 13:32, 1 August 2012 (EDT)


 * User talk:(WT-en) Danielfeihu, for example, but I got that message repeatedly while trying to edit the Travellers' Pub, too; other user talk pages; and when trying to delete a spam user page. And the site is still almost unbearably slow. Are you using various different browsers, or only IE? For the record, I use Firefox 14.0.1(WT-en) Ikan Kekek 04:54, 3 August 2012 (EDT)


 * OK, now I've logged out, deleted _all_ of my cookies, cleared my cache, logged back in, and _Still_ get this same error message when I try to edit a user talk page, such as User talk:(WT-en) Edralin. This is very annoying, because it's important to inform touters of why and how they're running afoul of Wikivoyage rules and guidelines. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 05:29, 3 August 2012 (EDT)


 * Do you see interwiki links and the link at the top of the page to Project:Votes for deletion on Special:RecentChanges? I was seeing that behavior yesterday until clearing all cookies, cache, etc.  One guess as to why some people are having issues is that IB has at least one bad server in their cluster, and if you have the bad luck to hit it then the site behaves poorly (note that most modern clusters will try to keep users on the same server, so if you hit it once you're stuck on it until you force your way off). -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 11:09, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Ontopic or not? Page gathering information on possibilities to take bicycles on public transport.
Hi! Over at the (Swedish-language) Facebook group and Facebook page  we were discussing to create a collection of information somewhere listing the possibilties (and lack-thereof) of taking a bicycle on Swedish trains, buses, etc. I wonder if that would be on-topic on Wikivoyage? It would be one page listing for all of Sweden with what companies and on what lines it's possible to take a bicycle and where it's not. If possible we would make a map out of it. A wiki would be useful, we don't have one, and on Wikipedia it would be off-topic I think. What about Wikivoyage? Does it fit? --(WT-en) Gerrit 17:08, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
 * Such an article might be a bit too limited in scope. It might be better to have an entire Bicycle travel in Sweden article that covers all aspects of bicycling.  (WT-en) LtPowers 18:45, 3 May 2012 (EDT)

www.airport-china.com
A lot of links to this site have been posted in articles about various Chinese cities. I doubt this is an official airport site, but I'm not completely certain. If it's not, all such links should be deleted. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 22:02, 25 May 2012 (EDT)


 * At the bottom of the page of http://www.airport-china.com are various advertising links to hotel booking sites and tour guides, there is also a statement of "Power by Lutu ltd.", whose own website states that:


 * Lutu Inc. is the one of the domestic company in China, which fully committed in the business of China Hotel Online Booking Service.


 * These links coupled with the .com rather than .cn top level domain suggest a commercial, rather than government, site.
 * The Civil Aviation Authority of China has a website at http://www.caac.gov.cn/.(WT-en) Travelpleb 10:57, 3 June 2012 (EDT)

Deletion of user and talk pages
Every time I'm monitoring the Recent Changes, I notice new users creating accounts then pasting some huge advertising spiel on their user/user talk pages. I understand advertising is completely disallowed, but are these pages meant to be outright deleted? If so, it may help if we had a template for 'Speedy deletions'. All the pages with the template would be put into a category where admins would just delete them without discussion, as they are blatant breaches of guidelines. Template:Vfd seems to only cover deletions that require discussion and consensus. I'll go ahead and create the template in the few days, if there are no objections, but wanted to also notify admins of the idea.

On an unrelated sidenote, I think the pub is definitely in need of a sweep of items that are at least 3 months old. Any objections to that? (WT-en)  J ames A    >talk


 * I've created Template:Delete and Category:Speedy deletion candidates. Please add it to your watchlist/userspace, admins, so you can keep an eye on it. :) (WT-en)  J ames A    <font color="#191970">>talk 08:11, 3 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I don't think a separate template is needed as the VFD tag should be sufficient, and if a speedy deletion is warranted the nomination can state as much. However, for spambot-created pages no nomination is needed unless the page is overlooked - per Project:Deletion policy obvious candidates don't require a nomination as it adds extra overhead for nominating and archiving discussion ("New pages that are plainly spam and that qualify for speedy deletion will be deleted as soon as they are noticed by an administrator, and therefore do not need to be listed on the votes for deletion page. If such a page remains for more than 24 hours, add it to the nominations page as a way to ensure that it isn't overlooked."). -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 13:15, 3 June 2012 (EDT)


 * Yes, such user pages should be deleted, and I delete them whenever I see them. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 18:20, 3 June 2012 (EDT)

The pub definitely needs more brooms! Please don't simply sweep everything into an archive, though. Discussions should be swept to the most relevant talk page, per the little sweeping guide at the top of this page. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 12:55, 3 June 2012 (EDT)


 * I didn't think it was necessary to list advertisement articles on the VfD page because, as Ryan said, it would involve extra nomination processes and archiving when discussion shouldn't be required. I considered letting an admin know on their talk page, but quite a few new pages popped up. Also, I'll sweep some old dust out of the pub later when I get a chance :) (WT-en) <font face="Segoe UI"><font color="#4682b4"> J ames A    <font face="Segoe UI"><font color="#191970">>talk 03:45, 4 June 2012 (EDT)

Introducing the API
Hey there. Just wanted to mention that I've gone and created an API for Wikitravel, for people who want to use Wikitravel data in other projects. It renders pages as hierarchical JSON objects, with wikimarkup rendered into simple HTML, and includes lists of subpages, geocoding of listings with addresses, etc. There's also a search API and the ability to search for pages and listings near a particular latitude and longitude. Please note, however, that it's very much a beta release; any feedback, suggestions, or bug reports would be most welcome! (WT-en) Rezendi 12:48, 4 June 2012 (EDT)

POTALA INN, LITANG Sichuan China, DON'T GO!
<removed by LtPowers>


 * Please add your information to the Litang travel article (click on the link, as the search function seems to be broken) because future travelers to the town will look for it there, not here. You should also boil it down to a few sentences. (WT-en) Ypsilon 08:10, 26 June 2012 (EDT)
 * No, that is improper advice. Project:Avoid negative reviews.  (WT-en) LtPowers 10:23, 26 June 2012 (EDT)
 * Yes, but I looked at the entry for the guesthouse out of curiosity and they weren't the first ones to complain about the service and the cleanliness. Googling the place gives even more negative reviews... And I guess there aren't very many places to choose from in the town, and according to the description it's centrally located too. So IMO this is one of the cases where travelers should be warned. (WT-en) Ypsilon 08:09, 27 June 2012 (EDT)
 * I removed the positive listing from the article. I would think that if they are using the internet to find accommodation, and they come here and aren't satisfied with any of the other 6 options we do list, then they would be fairly likely to look elsewhere online and encounter said negative reviews. You won't find commercial printed wasting space with such negative reviews either.(WT-en) texugo 11:55, 27 June 2012 (EDT)

Shared repository message
When you visit an image page on en: for a file hosted on shared, you get a message that "This file is from a shared repository. Visit it's file description page.." etc. When did that message turn into a hot pink eyesore? Can we change it do something a little less jolting? (WT-en) texugo 23:35, 5 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Yes, that was my handiwork at MediaWiki:Sharedupload-desc-there ;)


 * It should be at least a little jolting, though. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 00:18, 6 July 2012 (EDT)   → It should be better now 00:34, 6 July 2012 (EDT)


 * What's really interesting, though, is that Commons images are getting a different message (example: File:Rosslyn Panorama 00092.jpg), which copies the image licensing and attribution information! That message is MediaWiki:sharedupload-desc-here.  Now how do we get that functionality for our own shared repository...?  --(WT-en) Peter Talk 00:20, 6 July 2012 (EDT)

Suggestion: Guidelines for Accommodations (price)
During my trip to (Southeast-)Asia I experienced often the situation that the budget and mid-range section where totally mixed up. Maybe it would be good to have a rough guideline for each place to sort the accommodations according to the price. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Askingcat (talk • contribs)
 * Every Sleep section should have a Template:Sleeppricerange nearby. If one is missing, maybe you can add it!  (WT-en) LtPowers 09:12, 8 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Is that true? Should every sleep (and eat) section have one? Because most of our star articles don't, I think. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 10:49, 10 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Well, every bottom-level (leaf-node) article. At least, that's what I thought.  (WT-en) LtPowers 13:03, 10 July 2012 (EDT)

Coordinates
Hi! I'm new to Wikivoyage (in the meaning of adding information). I would like to make suggestion, although probably it was discussed before on this page. I think it will be very convenient to have GPS coordinates near titles of places, especially in the See section. When I go to new place, usually I print relevant Wikivoyage page and having coordinates there will be very helpful. Also it could very helpful to have linked appropriate Google map to the article, but probably it is out of scope of the project.

While I understand the nobody is able to add magically coordinates in the one moment, it would be nice to mention this somewhere in guidelines (if it is not yet) --(WT-en) DixonD 10:27, 10 July 2012 (EDT)


 * You can find more information on the topic at Project:Geocoding. If you have ideas as to how those coordinates can best be displayed and utilized, please leave a message on the talk page!  (WT-en) LtPowers 13:05, 10 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Also see Project:Geographical data and metadata. For adding geo data to listings, that's actually pretty easy, so long as they are properly formatted with our listings tags. For a completely random example, look at Slough and click on the edit link at the end of the listing. In the listing editor that comes up, you can enter the coordinates into the lat and long fields.


 * We used to have the ability to use special:mapstraction to pull up a Google Maps view of the article destination, but that doesn't seem to be functional now. In any rate, it wasn't that helpful, and probably just distracts from our mapmaking goals, which stress keeping the maps on-site, so that articles are easy to print and use on the go. In the not-yet-foreseeable future, one of our goals is to auto-generate maps of our listings on maps imported from OpenStreetMap, which shares our CC license. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 13:30, 10 July 2012 (EDT)

Itinerary advice - Erie Canal
I'm currently writing the Erie Canal itinerary article, and I'd appreciate some input regarding whether I'm on the right track or not. I've never written an itinerary article before and I want to make sure it's starting out okay before I get too far into it. Please comment on the article's talk page. Thanks! (WT-en) LtPowers 20:31, 25 July 2012 (EDT)

Nowiki tag broken?
Tried to use the nowiki tag in Project:Currency without desired result. Is there an alternative? /(WT-en) Blist 08:41, 27 July 2012 (EDT)
 * It works on wiki markup and HTML tags, but it seems it's not working on HTML entities like &amp;nbsp; and &amp;ndash;. I don't know if this is a bug or expected behavior.  Fortunately, there's an easy workaround; the &amp;amp; entity produces an ampersand, which you can use to write out the entity without having the character display.  (See the source code for this paragraph for examples.)  (WT-en) LtPowers 12:06, 27 July 2012 (EDT)
 * wikipedia:Help:Wiki markup indicates that this is expected behavior of the  tag.  (WT-en) LtPowers 12:13, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

Broken file links
Kralupy_nad_Vltavou has links to files &   but the images aren't showing on the page. What's the problem? (WV-en) Travelpleb (talk) 21:55, 28 September 2012 (CEST)


 * Beats me, the syntax looks fine, and the images are on wts, but will not display on en: &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 22:56, 28 September 2012 (CEST)


 * I am having similar issues with images. Must be a bug. --Globe-trotter (talk) 04:41, 29 September 2012 (CEST)


 * Fixed broken links. --Unger (talk) 09:20, 16 October 2012 (CEST)
 * Thanks. --Saqib (talk) 09:29, 16 October 2012 (CEST)
 * Thank you. That's wonderful. (WV-en) Travelpleb (talk) 09:45, 16 October 2012 (CEST)

Sanity check


Does anyone have any idea why wts:Image:Funza map.png is not displaying? --Peter Talk 01:28, 2 October 2012 (CEST)


 * I've got no idea why, I've been tearing my hair out experimenting too. See http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Travellers%27_pub#Broken_file_links above for a similar problem going back to 28 September 2012, Peter. --W. Franke-mailtalk 01:52, 2 October 2012 (CEST)


 * It's a bug, I think. We already discussed it here. --Globe-trotter (talk) 01:59, 2 October 2012 (CEST)


 * I've figured it out. The files aren't being automatically transferred to here, en.wikivoyage.org, from the shared repository, wts.wikivoyage.org.


 * So if you want your photos to be displayed, upload them here by creating a page with the file name as it is on shared (e.g. Peter's File:Funza map.png - make sure you get the name right, it's "File" not "Image"). The page doesn't need to contain any text. Once the page File:Funza map.png is created, there's a message saying "No file by this name exists, but you can upload it." Following the link takes you to a scary looking site that forbids uploading. Upload the file anyway, copying and pasting the summary info from shared, click "ignore any warnings" and that's it.


 * Job done. Laborious, but it works. (WV-en) Travelpleb (talk) 21:58, 2 October 2012 (CEST)


 * Yes, but this is something we are not supposed to do. The idea is to have images in a common repository, not in each language version independently. Atsirlin (talk) 22:12, 2 October 2012 (CEST)
 * Is there a problem if they're uploaded once at shared and once here?(WV-en) Travelpleb (talk) 22:21, 2 October 2012 (CEST)


 * Yes, because then other language versions can't use them. We really need to report this bug somewhere. --Globe-trotter (talk) 22:30, 2 October 2012 (CEST)


 * Yes, because things become messy. For example, maps are regularly updated, and it is impossible to keep track of the same map stored in 3-4 different places. Additionally, shared has categories that are very useful in organizing images. These categories are missing on :en, so you can't easily find images that are stored locally.
 * Please, do not upload new images on :en! We have spent considerable effort in moving things from :en to shared. This movement will likely recur until all images are eventually transferred to shared or even to Commons. Atsirlin (talk) 22:37, 2 October 2012 (CEST)
 * So what do we do? To whom do we report this? How do we fix this? (WV-en) Travelpleb (talk) 22:46, 2 October 2012 (CEST)
 * One can submit a request to tech. However, Globe-trotter has just left a personal message to our system administrator. Let's be patient! Atsirlin (talk) 22:58, 2 October 2012 (CEST)


 * It seems this is still an issue (for everyone else too, right)? --Peter Talk 05:45, 11 October 2012 (CEST)

User pages
There is a discussion ongoing about the imported user pages. I just repeat my text here:

The problem is. This is not a question of community decision making. Its a question of correct attribution and meeting the legal demands. We have NO proper way to proof the identity of usernames. In a legal way the user Fussi on WT is not the user Fussi on WV. IBobi can register a user named Peter and redirect his WT-userpage to his own user page (of course Peter is used now). The only way to meet the legal demands is to import the userpage with the prefix and protect it. We are forced to do it. I hope the community accepts this way of attribution till we have a real statement from a lawyer or the WMF helps us.

We as the site owner have to take care of the site. I am the one who gets the letter from IB or any user on WT when we are sued. There is no room for discussions about this at the moment. If you can arrange a lawyer who can confirm that the redirects are no problem - that's ok. The Lounge is open for it. I have asked but till now I have no feedback from the WMF concerning a correct attribution. We did not find a solution to proof the accounts identity. So we all have to live with that. And besides. Everybody can create a new user page just by copy and paste and using the same Wiki Markup. Redirecting back was the just the way to create the starting state. Of course everybody has is own control over his user page. I really ask you to leave the imported user pages - the ones with the prefix - as they are and use your own ones. Now some redirect to the imported WT page. Of course you can remove that redirect and create your own ones. It was just the fstest to reactivate the imported user pages.

There are so many duties. We need all WT-Logos removed before we can go online. We all have so much work to do. You all are about to adapt your policies. I hope the community does not leave us alone with that. Please write an email or drop a line on the discussion page to contact me, if there are any problems. I am busy with my job and besides I try to keep all the contacts to the WMF and WMDE and you alive and get a timetable for the next steps.

Maybe the WMF will provide a different solution for the user account problem, but till then I hope you can live with our data migration, because we have no help from the WMF. -- DerFussi (talk) 22:17, 10 September 2012 (CEST)


 * The primary place for this discussion now appears at gen:Talk:Migration_FAQ --Inas (talk) 03:01, 11 September 2012 (CEST)

Missing or broken images
Can someone please let me know where I should list images that are 'broken', or not displaying in an article, WV commons is displaying a blank image window for the respective images concerned, and accordingly the article/s using those images are not displaying the image. Yesterday for example I got an error message describing the South Bali Region map as having to many bytes (I assume as opposed to the file count in its meta data), today it is just not displaying, as are 3 photo images. The images not displaying in the South Bali article are : Bali-South. --- Felix (talk) 23:17, 10 September 2012 (CEST)
 * Image:Bali-South-Bali-Region-Map.png (does not exist on WV Commons, though yesterday it was generating an error message)
 * Image:Pura_Tanah_Lot.jpg - (does not display on WV Commons)
 * Image:Seminyak_Beach_2.jpg - (does not display on WV Commons)
 * Image:Sunset_in_Kuta.jpg - (does display on WV Commons, however not in the South Bali article)


 * I can see these images. Have you tried to press "Purge Cache for this page"? Atsirlin (talk) 23:24, 10 September 2012 (CEST)


 * Yes I have 'purged' and and restarted my browser, but I am not getting them on the article, or at WV Commons... I will look for the error message I got yesterday and post it here in a few minutes. I have downloaded the images from WT Commons and they are on my desktop. -- Felix (talk) 23:34, 10 September 2012 (CEST)


 * From yesterday South Bali article map. -- Felix (talk) 23:37, 10 September 2012 (CEST)

Error creating thumbnail: convert: Expected 8192 bytes; found 1886 bytes `/home/www/wts.wikivoyage.org/w/images/b/bb/Bali-South-Bali-Region-Map.png' @ warning/png.c/PNGWarningHandler/1472. convert: Read Exception `/home/www/wts.wikivoyage.org/w/images/b/bb/Bali-South-Bali-Region-Map.png' @ error/png.c/PNGErrorHandler/1455. convert: corrupt image `/home/www/wts.wikivoyage.org/w/images/b/bb/Bali-South-Bali-Region-Map.png' @ error/png.c/ReadPNGImage/2995. convert: missing an image filename `/tmp/transform_55ecad3-1.png' @ error/convert.c/ConvertImageCommand/2940.


 * I am also having similar issues on the http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Bangkok/Sukhumvit article, there my browser cannot display any of the images on the page, where-as on the South Bali article only some of them are not displaying.
 * I can open the page http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/File:Thanonsukhumvit.jpg but the image does not appear in the image pane
 * I cannot open the page http://wts.wikivoyage.org/w/images/4/4d/Thanonsukhumvit.jpg when I try I get the message can't find the server "wtswikivoyage.org".
 * However I can open it using a firefox browser running on the same computer.
 * I can open the page http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/File:Sukhumvit_Road_-01.jpg but the image does not appear in the image pane
 * I cannot open the page http://wts.wikivoyage.org/w/images/8/83/Sukhumvit_Road_-01.jpg when I try I get the message can't find the server "wtswikivoyage.org"
 * The caches had all been flushed out, so as I could view the Bangkok/Sukhumvit images using a Firefox browser I checked the South Bali images, and sure enough they were there. So I decided I had a browser issue with Safari browser Version 5.1.7 (6534.57.2) running on a i7 applemac. So I went to another applemac computer, this one running Safari Version 4.1.3 (4533.19.4), it had never visited the WV site before and the caches and histories were previously scrubbed. I repeated the exact same issues with that entirely different computer, using a different version of the Safari browser,
 * So then I tried using Firefox on that computer, same deal could not load the images an http://wts.wikivoyage.org/w/images/8/83/Sukhumvit_Road_-01.jpg gave me essentially the same message as the Safari browser did... can't find the server "wtswikivoyage.org".
 * I use the Firefox browser through the Tor network on my main computer as I need to for various reasons, so it was accessing the WV site through a Tor server when using that browser. When I then enabled Tor on the Firefox browser using the second computer I could then see the images on the article page and click through to view the file at http://wts.wikivoyage.org/w/images/8/83/Sukhumvit_Road_-01.jpg
 * So then I toggled Tor on and off a few times and repeated the image view problem. Of course by now I was suspecting something odd was going on with my Indonesian ISPs access to wtswikivoyage.org as I was repeating the problem on 2 entirely different computers (one is an older Power PC mac and the other is a new model Intel Mac) with quite different versions of OS and browser/s, the only thing in common was no access to wtswikivoyage.org and the image views when using my Indonesian IP to approach the WV servers.
 * Of course each time I toggled Tor on and off I had to log into the 'secured' WV En project again using the login and password. I also quite the Firefox browser several times. As both of these computers are set up for secure browsing using Firefox and Tor everything gets completely flushed on a browser quit.
 * So it appears that my Indonesian ISP PT Telkom Indonesia may be the established variable here.
 * If the Firefox browser caches the image from the Tor server access it will display the page, this happened a couple of times and confused me for a moment, however I soon caught on to that by trying another image that was not yet cached and it would similarly not load.
 * I am very clear on this and there is no confusion at my end. The exact problem is repeatable, including the South Bali article images as documented above, only the last 2 images on the page are viewable if accessing from my Indonesian ISP. History versions of the same image non-viewable files are also not accessible, for example I tried history versions of Image:Seminyak_Beach_2.jpg but could load the page them, however the linked source Flickr file was fine.
 * I returned to some of the pages I edited yesterday and images I clearly recall seeing earlier are now no longer displaying, going to the source file similarly provides a cannot access server message. On some article pages all of the images cannot be viewed, on others only a few of them cannot be viewed, each page reload is consistent, even after a full cache flush and browser relaunch. I most certainly recall viewing these images yesterday, it is that one of the things I was 'checking the articles for. The only problem I had yesterday was the South Bali map image and that produced the error message cut and pasted above.
 * If I go to http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/User:(WT-en)_Burmesedays all the .png will not display, the rest of the page is fine, and I can see everything if I approach WV from a Tor server.
 * Log when viewing http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/User:(WT-en)_Burmesedays:
 * http://wts.wikivoyage.org/w/images/thumb/0/0d/Central_Java_Region_map.png/158px-Central_Java_Region_map.png
 * http://wts.wikivoyage.org/w/images/thumb/2/27/Vietnam_Regions_Map.png/72px-Vietnam_Regions_Map.png
 * etc for all the .png images on that page, the rest of the page log is normal.
 * I would really like to know what others think about this.
 * I have never seen an IP block work selectively like this except on some websites with regional copyright or access filters, ie blocking embedded Flash video files and similar that the copyright owner has not released for viewing in a particular market so the IP ranges in that country are blocked from access, I assume some clumsy artifact or gremlin must be loose on the WV servers, maybe that is what might be causing this, o r really very strange filter at the ISP PT Telkom Indonesia. --- Felix (talk) 04:03, 11 September 2012 (CEST)


 * This morning I am able to view those images detailed above using any browser and accessed from my Indonesian IP. Did anyone at the WV end look into this? Just curious as I would like to understand if the problem arose form something on the WV servers or if it was an ISP issue. -- Felix (talk) 04:57, 12 September 2012 (CEST)

Two pages re-directing to each other
On the former Wikitravel, Mount Everest was a disambiguation page. Now after being migrated to Wikivoyage, it consists of two pages that redirect to each other. What happened? – sumone10154 ( talk ) 02:33, 11 September 2012 (CEST)
 * Looks like at the time of the copy, Everest was moved to Mount Everest, where that was only a redirect to start with. It doesn't appear to be an issue with the dump.  We don't have the deleted page that would have been Mount Everest, so just re-add the info, I think.  --Inas (talk) 02:58, 11 September 2012 (CEST)
 * The same problem occurs with North-Eastern India. This is an actual article, so if we copy-paste, we'll lose the history. – sumone10154 ( talk ) 23:50, 12 September 2012 (CEST)
 * Actually there are alot more pages that redirect to each other. See Special:DoubleRedirects. – sumone10154 ( talk ) 23:55, 12 September 2012 (CEST)


 * If it was a deleted here, we could recover it, but it was deleted on WT and therefore not copied. However, it was just a disambig page, so I'd just recreate it, there isn't anything to attribute, and no need to derive anything.  --Inas (talk) 07:09, 13 September 2012 (CEST)

Flattening the region hierarchy - discussion needed
I have proposed a moderately significant change to the way we handle our hierarchy. Please chip in with comments here: Project talk:Geographical_hierarchy &mdash; Ravikiran r (talk) 08:51, 27 September 2012 (CEST)

Captcha and spam protection
Happily we are so far spam clean but i guess that this will not stay forever. What are our settings for Captcha? Do we have the option for limited range blocks? When i look at WT, we should be prepared... Jc8136 (talk) 14:30, 27 September 2012 (CEST)


 * You're completely right. Although we did often accuse IB of doing nothing (which was mostly true), it seems that their CAPTCHA was on the highest setting. If anyone hasn't seen yet, now that we're gone, they're taking a new approach of preventing new users from adding external links. Of course, it has had a lot of negative feedback from users who were making good faith edits or even trying to revert bad ones! We could adopt a lighter approach to this. Then there's also Wikipedia, which seems to avoid much spam for a site of its size; it's manual vandalism that they have issues with. I'm sure the WMF can offer some mentoring as to how to tackle the spam issue. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 15:11, 27 September 2012 (CEST)
 * I fear some semi-professional spam attacks like the indian SEOs which cause troubles over several articles but using the same IP range. If we could block temporarily specific IP ranges, most attacks would falter. I think WMF attracts less spam because it is harder to place a marketing link in an encyclopedia article than in a travel guide. Jc8136 (talk) 15:30, 27 September 2012 (CEST)

Call for alternative domain names and notice of vote at Meta
WMF have decided to go ahead with a vote for a domain name for the new travel guide. Voting will not open until everyone has had a reasonable chance to submit a name. Please follow the process outlined at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Travel_Guide/Naming_Process to ensure that the domain name isn't taken over by squatters the moment you suggest it.

There are already 14 names on the list for which the domains are owned and available.

Deadline for submitting alternative names is 2nd October, after which the voting starts. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 23:41, 27 September 2012 (CEST)


 * Terrific! --W. Franke-mailtalk 23:44, 27 September 2012 (CEST)

Sidebar link not correct.
The sidebar link "Uploads & bug reports" opens the main page on shared. There is another link in the toolbox for uploads, so that part is redundant. Should "Bug reports" be in the main section of the sidebar, and if so, where should it link to? • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 22:43, 28 September 2012 (CEST)
 * "Bug reports" is not that necessary to appear in the sidebar. Should either be removed or move under "Toolbox" and link it to Category:Tech_requests#Bug_reports for the time being. --Saqib (talk) 22:54, 28 September 2012 (CEST)
 * I think tech reports should link to tech:Main Page. – sumone10154 ( talk ) 23:08, 28 September 2012 (CEST)
 * Tech is already listed in the sidebar. So I think it can go. --Globe-trotter (talk) 23:48, 28 September 2012 (CEST)
 * Maybe it too late at night, but I can't find tech on the sidebar. &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 00:16, 29 September 2012 (CEST)
 * I guess Globe-trotter is talking about the sidebar on Wikivoyage Shared. --Saqib (talk) 00:23, 29 September 2012 (CEST)
 * I have excised the outdated bits from both. --Peter Talk 02:27, 29 September 2012 (CEST)

What will we be called?
Vote early and vote often as they say in Ulster!

The polls opened yesterday and, so far, "Wikivoyage" is winning hands down... --W. Franke-mailtalk 18:43, 3 October 2012 (CEST)
 * I wish Wikivouage W. Frank :) Will vote there right now. --Saqib (talk) 18:48, 3 October 2012 (CEST)
 * I'm trying not to let my mask of neutrality slip - Wikivoyage is bloody hard to write - let alone pronounce - in a lot of languages, but it seems like a one horse race, right now, Saqib. --W. Franke-mailtalk 22:28, 3 October 2012 (CEST)

Interproject links
I added some interproject links, see Special:Interwiki. --Unger (talk) 13:23, 7 October 2012 (CEST)

Tech issues
For some reason, en.wikivoyage.org can't be accessed on the T-Mobile (US) network (no problem with wikivoyage.org). I have tried 2 different Android phones and tried tethering my computer to both phones and keep getting the HTTP Error 504. I have described the problem (while tethering laptop to cell phone) on my WV talk page. Not sure what is being blocked, but this could be a big problem for mobile users as T-Mobile is the 4th largest network in the US...soon 3rd largest when they merge with the MetroPCS network. Also note that they may or may not be using the same network technology as the European T-Mobile uses. If there is a better place for this discussion, feel free to move it. AHeneen (talk) 22:07, 16 October 2012 (CEST)


 * 504 Errors are proxy errors, therefore you should contact T-Mobile (US). Without proxys, WV is working well. --Unger (talk) 06:54, 17 October 2012 (CEST)

Introducing Kiva and Freerice
Hi all. I hope no one minds, but I've created groups on two humanitarian sites for Wikivoyage members. Both of these sites offer ways to give something back to the world (both financially and non-financially). As we all love travelling the world, we see poverty first-hand, and this gives us a way to help alleviate that. It is a great distinguishing factor from our previous incarnation, as we become more socially responsible. Similarly, it gives us an opportunity to promote our new, growing site. Another IB fork, Milepoint, was ranked third on Kiva at the time of writing, giving much needed positive exposure. For more info about their fork, which seems similar to ours, see. Now onto the sites themselves:


 * Freerice (Wikipedia link) - A site hosted by the UN World Food Programme that donates rice with money raised from ads. You simply answer questions, growing your knowledge, and help the poor. You can choose which team to contribute your total to before answering questions. Our group:


 * Kiva (Wikipedia link) - A non-profit site that allows you to loan money to groups/individuals in third world countries interest-free so that they can support themselves. The money is eventually repaid back to you. Again, you can choose a team to contribute funds to, which goes on a global leaderboard. Our group:

Please note, there are no legal or monetary concerns/obligations whatsoever. This is merely a way to expand our online exposure and be more humanitarian. Also, if you haven't signed up to Kiva yet, let me know, as I can invite you and we both get one free loan! :) So guys, help out and make the world a better place and improve our image! <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 07:49, 21 October 2012 (CEST)
 * James, I appreciate your concern but there are many other ways to publicize Wikivoyage project. --Saqib (talk) 09:10, 21 October 2012 (CEST)
 * Of course there is. We're not going to put all our eggs into one basket. I, along with others, use these sites regularly, and if Wikivoyage can be publicised concurrently, there's no harm done. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 10:02, 21 October 2012 (CEST)

Locking wikivoyage-old.org
The sitenotice and database locked message on (and possibly the other languages too) should be updated to remind users that it is an old site and only there for viewing purposes while the new one is beta. Possibly a link can be added in the sitenotice that links back to this site as well, as I'm sure some users are going to become confused between the two. Account creation should also be disabled if it hasn't already. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 05:26, 11 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Now to see if the search engines index it instead of the real site? K7L (talk) 05:54, 11 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Wouldn't that be a disaster! We should get the sister links up on Wikipedia soon so to avoid such a process. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 06:31, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Links from Wikipedia individual languages

 * We should be using ' rel="nofollow" ' on any links we create to "old" versions of the project (including WT and WV-old). The sister links on Wikipedia seem to need to be requested one language at a time. Process appears to vary but is basically:


 * Create a new template like w:en:template:Wikivoyage on each language that had a WT (wikitravel or wikitravelpar) template; keep the format similar to the old template to allow direct substitution. Link target should be an interwiki link (not an external link) to [[voy: if a WV exists in that Wikipedia's language, [[:en:voy: if not.
 * Replace a few WT templates with the newly-created WV template to verify the code is correct. If there are only a small number of pages using the template (for instance, ten pages of Croatian - or something too small to be controversial in any way) change them all manually.
 * If there's some huge number of affected pages, this will require a 'bot do the search-and-replace and that will usually require some sort of discussion. Nominating the old WT link template for deletion with a link to an explanation of the situation and a brief summary (WV is a Wikimedia sibling/WT is a different fork of the same project by a for-profit direct competitor...) and requesting the WT template be searched-and-replaced (to your newly-created WV template) then deleted is reasonable.
 * If you need to open a VfD or TfD on a project where you don't know the language, there is likely a page with a name like Project:Embassy on the individual-language Wikipedia itself or on WP meta: - ask there for the nomination to be made on your behalf.
 * In some cases, there is a different template format for Wikimedia sibling projects (for instance, fr: has "autres projets" as an "other projects" sibling box with logos for Wikinews, Wikibooks and the like - we're there now). It may be best to follow their existing naming convention if you can (although a robot search-and-replace requires the new template be at least similar to the old one, if a wiki has 30 links instead of the 3000 on en: then manual replacement is a flexible option).
 * To see if any special format is available for sibling projects, look for templates for other WMF wikis like wikinews or commons. K7L (talk) 20:51, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

A global list of what is using the wikitravel: prefix on WMF wikis is here. These need to go away as interwiki links (or at least be converted to proper external links, rel="nofollow" and all) before deletion of the prefix can be requested again on m:Talk:Interwiki map. It looks like there are more of these WT templates across various languages than the inter-language links on the en: or fr: versions of the template indicate. That's going to mean going through this list to find all of the offending templates. K7L (talk) 02:38, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Current link/template status on known individual Wikipedias (feel free to update this as the info changes) is:
 * af (on 20 pages) -
 * as (on 20 pages) -
 * az (on 12 pages) -
 * be (on 6 pages) -
 * bg (on 3 pages) -
 * bn (on 45 pages) - (see also w:bn:টেমপ্লেট:Wikitravelpar)
 * br (on 4 pages) -
 * bs (on 14 pages) -
 * ca(on 120 pages) -
 * ceb (on 6 pages) -
 * w:de:Vorlage:Wikivoyage (predictably) already exists. :)
 * en (on >3000 pages) - w:en:Template:Wikivoyage created, request to add rel="nofollow" to existing WT template (so search engines ignore the link) successful, TfD to delete all WT templates and have a robot replace them with WV templates successful at w:Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 November 10, 'bot approved to make the replacements. IBobi not happy and now indef-blocked again. Too bad.
 * es - No template (WT template was deleted in 2006)
 * fi (on 350 pages) - w:fi:Malline:Wikivoyage-rivi created as replacement for en.WT, the template still needs to be replaced on many individual pages. Links to fi.WT need to be left in place for now, until fi.wikivoyage.org is created (it doesn't exist yet)
 * fr (was on 30-50 pages) - WT template deleted via TfD, WV template not created as w:fr:modèle:autres projets with WV as a Wikimédia sibling project is now in place on the articles; Neuchâtel is an example of the new "other projects" box with the Commons and WV logos, looks good.
 * hr (was on 12 pages) - w:hr:Predložak:Wikivoyage created and placed manually. No attempt yet to VfD the old WT template, given the small number of pages and lack of a WV in this language.
 * ja - No template (WT template was deleted in 2006)
 * ka (on 20 pages) -
 * ko (on 60 pages) -
 * ml (on 60 pages) -
 * nl (on <50 pages) -
 * pl (on 54 pages) -
 * pt (on 215 pages) -
 * ro (on 160 pages) -
 * simple: (about 30 pages) has been replaced manually and the former WT template deleted
 * sr (on 240 pages) -
 * sv (on 2 pages) -
 * ur (on 40 pages) -
 * zh (on 220 pages) -

Default wiki timezone
It has been reported through 41992 Wikivoyage wikis currently use UTC timezone.

I offer to let this timezone by default for en.wikivoyage, as English is used as a primary language in too many timezones (London? New York? San Francisco?) to settle on one.

Do you agree with this solution?

For reference, this PHP manual page contains the list of supported timezones. --Dereckson (talk) 19:30, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Of course, such a project should use UTC. <font color = "darkmagenta">Snowolf <font color = "darkmagenta">How can I help? 19:52, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Keeping UTC is the best idea. Yann (talk) 06:41, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Read only on wts?
The pub, vfd, etc seem to be read only on wts. The File: namespace still appears writable. Is there any reason/motivation? --Inas (talk) 22:05, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I remember seeing something about tagging it before importing it or tagging as imported and stuff like that. <font color = "darkmagenta">Snowolf <font color = "darkmagenta">How can I help? 22:15, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * This was done on individual languages (like en.wikivoyage-old) as local images are still being marked "nowCommons" or "move", but I'm not sure why it would be needed on wts (which didn't get moved to WMF). K7L (talk) 22:17, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that partial editing restrictions apply to the whole database, so we either open en.wikivoyage-old.org completely, or restrict access to the main namespace on WTS. I have been in touch with Roland, and he said that he did not know how to resolve this. My latest suggestion was to move WTS Pub to the Wikivoyage: namespace, and leave this namespace open everywhere (in fact, it is already open). I hope that Roland can do it as soon as he reads his e-mail. --Atsirlin (talk) 22:28, 11 November 2012 (UTC)


 * To me the answer is simple. WTS is not migrated, it should be fully open.  We should still be going through the process of vfd, migration, etc, following the associated policies.  All the other sites (that have been migrated) should be locked down.  --Inas (talk) 00:16, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The language versions need at least partial write-access so that we can track image migration.  LtPowers (talk) 01:21, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Of course, WTS should be fully open. But this won't be compatible with the partial writing access to individual language versions. Or if you know how to fix this problem, please, get it touch with Roland and give him your suggestions. --Atsirlin (talk) 06:53, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Is there any reason the pub can't be put into the Category: namespace? Categories can still be edited like any other page. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 13:14, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * If you decide to make the pub into a "category", please also turn Votes for deletion into a "category". --Stefan2 (talk) 13:19, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I have asked Roland yesterday, but he did not reply. Perhaps you should also bug him. --Atsirlin (talk) 13:48, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Is the database locked to developers only, or administrators? An admin could move the Pub and VfD into the category namespace. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 05:31, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * For anyone who wasn't aware, a temporary pub has been set up at <font color="#4682b4">JamesA   <font color="#191970">>talk 05:33, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Voyage/Travel stats for November 11
Stats for 20121111 Number of entries in recent changes edits (including deletions/blocks): WV: 1370 WT: 367 Number of article edits: WV: 1346 WT: 283 By https://github.com/nicolas-raoul/VoyageVsTravel Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:40, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Bot flag for Snowbot
Yes, another bot is clogging up the Recent changes preventing us from patrolling edits and welcoming users. It's great to have the bot here fixing the numerous issues, but could an admin please give User:Snowbot the bot flag? Thanks. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 08:17, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually the bot has the flag, so I must be doing something wrong, will check and fix it. <font color = "darkmagenta">Snowolf <font color = "darkmagenta">How can I help? 08:21, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. I definitely have bot edits hidden in RC. It's not urgent, as I managed to hide them by selecting User talk and inverting selection. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 08:24, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * This seems to be a result of 33461, I'll have to remake the task with Pywikipedia or poke the AWB devs to figure out why it's happening here but not on enwiki, in the meantime I have stopped the bot. <font color = "darkmagenta">Snowolf <font color = "darkmagenta">How can I help? 08:33, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I've got a reply from the AWB devs and the issue should already be fixed in their next release/snapshot, so it's just a question of waiting for that to come out, hopefully very soon :) <font color = "darkmagenta">Snowolf <font color = "darkmagenta">How can I help? 09:14, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Apparently it was a much simpler issue which has now been fixed thanks to Thehelpfulone, the bot is back up and running with its bot flag and the edits shouldn't fill the recetn changes anymore :) <font color = "darkmagenta">Snowolf <font color = "darkmagenta">How can I help? 12:45, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Great news. Thanks to you both. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 13:08, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

en.wikivoyage.com
Now I'm getting confused. We seem to have three independent English Wikivoyage sites running: Where has his .com version come from? Shouldn't .com simply redirect to the .org site? <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 12:50, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * http://en.wikivoyage.org/ - this one
 * http://en.wikivoyage-old.org/ - the old version where we are reclaiming lost local pictures
 * http://en.wikivoyage.com/ - no idea.
 * Hmm, I noticed this too - I think the en.wikivoyage.com is the same wiki as wikivoyage-old.org, but you're right that it's not been redirected - unless this is intentional, I'll poke WMF staff later today to get wikivoyage.com -> wikivoyage-old.org (or do we want it to come here?). The  helpful  one  13:01, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * They are definitely separate sites, which can be seen by the varying Recent Changes. I'd say redirect here. I first noticed it because of a Google listing. It'd be terrible if Google starts crawling and listing that site, and not this one. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 13:07, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * .com = wikivoyage-old. The .com is still owned by Wikivoyage e.V. due to a 60 day transfer lock (they just recently acquired it). However it should be possible to change the nameservers so that it uses the Wikimedia nameservers before it's transferred to WMF. Alternatively they could just set up a redirect. I've emailed Stefan about it.--Eloquence (talk) 19:03, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the clarification. It appears that .com does = wikivoyage-old now, but that wasn't so yesterday. I am 100% sure the Recent Changes of both sites were different yesterday, meaning 2 different editable servers. Regardless, I think it'd be preferable if it was to redirect to en.wikivoyage.org. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 05:27, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * http://en.wikivoyage.com is still editable. This may badly confuse newcomers. Who can fix this? As a stop gap measure, someone with Administrator privileges please put a BIG notice and a link to Wikiversity.ORG into the .COM's site notice, here http://en.wikivoyage.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice (that is http:// not https://) or better yet get the .COM to forward to the .ORG. It is just so confusing. --Rogerhc (talk) 21:48, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Please, leave a message to User:RolandUnger (preferably, on German Wikivoyage). He is the only person to help you. What you see is the editing on wikivoyage-old.org wikis that should remain partially open until we complete the image transfer. --Atsirlin (talk) 22:22, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Stefan changed the nameservers yesterday, and this should finally be fixed. wikivoyage.com should now redirect to wikivoyage.org. (This update may still take a little while to be reflected at your ISP's DNS.)--Eloquence (talk) 00:10, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorting and tagging images
Although everyone is happy about the renewed Wikivoyage, we still have to deal with lots of images awaiting their systematization and transfer to Commons. To be more precise, we still have about 10000 files without tags on WTS and more than 7000 files on en.wikivoyage-old.org.

We kindly ask everyone to participate in this work!

The new discussion page is here. It contains the list of tasks and the place for further discussions (Votes for deletion, etc) --Atsirlin (talk) 21:10, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree that we must focus on the image-transfer and other cleanup work. I've changed the Collaboration of the Month back to Cleanup. I think we should add a note to the Sitenotice that reminds editors that this isn't the time for travel-related contributions, but rather maintenance work. There'll be plenty of time for article-writing after the beta stage is over. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 05:29, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * If we have new users coming here from Wikipedia, telling them *not* to make the predictable first edit to mainspace (which usually involves fixing any blatant factual omissions in their own home town's article) likely isn't helpful as we do want to encourage them to stick around. It would be a good idea to link both to Welcome, Wikipedians and to a page explaining what needs to be done to fix broken images, broken wts: links and other just plain red-linked and broken things left over from the transition. Presumably some things can be done by a 'bot (like replacing links to "nowCommons" images) while others cannot (such as deciding what tag to put onto an image in the first place). WP users coming here could be very helpful in placing commons: images in articles which are currently broken if it's clear what has to be done manually. Write a help page, point a link from the sitenotice there. K7L (talk) 22:06, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

UK Tourist Lines
I wasn't sure this was article material, but wanted to start on what Wikipedia would call a stub:-

User:Sfan00 IMG/Severn Valley Railway

The SVR is one of the better known UK tourist lines, and I was wanting some feedback on it's continued development. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 20:23, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Itineraries is likely the best fit for something like this... travel instructions that arbitrarily start at one end of the line and say "go here, see this and do that". (This is opposite in approach to Wikipedia, which would present a list of stations and a factual description with no "go here, do this" or itinerary wording.) Trans-Siberian Railway is one example of such an itinerary. Some of the headings that appear on a city (such as "sleep") might not be needed on an itinerary as these usually briefly describe all the towns the trip passes through - leaving fine detail to the individual city-level articles along the route. K7L (talk) 20:58, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You might also look at Scuba diving for an example of how to structure things where a high-level article with many children is needed. That set is huge and worldwide where yours is smaller and just in the UK, but it might give you ideas. Pashley (talk) 21:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * A UK example of a railway itinerary is West Highland Railway, which describes the Network Rail line from Glasgow to Fort William or Oban. In this case the article has had useful edits on WT since the fork, so you may also want to look there. I think that a few more UK railway itineraries would be good. AlasdairW (talk) 23:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Ryan Holliday and Google Maps
Okay so ryan holliday deletes all of my contribs and doesn't block me so whats the point? I'am not a vandal by any means i use google maps i find them reliable please don't delete this discussion. Give me a freaking chance will ya? --Dortmund (talk) 21:44, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't understand either. These reverts really don't make sense to me: you changed treaure->treaSure and he reverted it, US1->US Route one reverted (actually, per Manual of Style, it should be U.S. 1), you turned Flint->Flint and Bay City->Bay City reverted, and several more. Ryan is a long-time WT/WV user, so I'll wait for his response before judging. Only explanation I can think of is maybe he saw 1-2 edits of yours, thought they were spam, and rolled-back all your edits without looking at them. AHeneen (talk) 21:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * AHeneen i think i had a wikitravel account with the same name wt:Dortmund so Ryan assumes i'am a PCV page creation vandal which is not true i guess he just don't trust me. Thank you for your input. --Dortmund (talk) 22:05, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Bay City is a disampiguation... did you mean Bay City (Michigan)? K7L (talk) 22:19, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Is there a copyright issue with Google maps? Pashley (talk) 22:19, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I hope not, what other sites are there? --Dortmund (talk) 22:21, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Please see pcv for a partial history of this user's contributions. As far as I'm aware this user is the site's longest-running troll, going back many years, and contributions are generally reverted as soon as they are recognized.  Peter also collected a trail of this user's greatest hits a while back. -- Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 22:28, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'am not a vandal wikitravel or wikivoyage please trust me. --Dortmund (talk) 22:37, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Whoa the Mainer kid?! I'm honestly kind of happy in a nostalgiac way to see you followed us to the new site! Those just joining in should understand that Ryan's veteran troll spotting is a bulls-eye mark as usual. --Peter in the tundra 23:27, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * So can i still edit or no? Dortmund (talk) 11:41, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * What are you doing with Google Maps? Their stuff is copyrighted as should be obvious. openstreetmap.org is the free alternative. Kaldari (talk) 01:40, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * So can i edit still? --Dortmund (talk) 00:06, 7 December 2012 (UTC) Oh and when i was on wikitravel i used google maps and it seemed fine.
 * I'am not a PCV okay! Ryan please stop deleting my content. --Dortmund (talk) 12:59, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I provide good edits okay? Let me contribute. --Dortmund (talk) 23:59, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

How to opt-in to the transfer of my wikitravel data ?
I made one single contribution on wikitravel.org (http://wikitravel.org/wiki/fr/index.php?title=Guide_linguistique_espagnol&diff=prev&oldid=91400)

And this contribution is also available on wikivoyage.org (http://fr.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Guide_linguistique_espagnol&diff=34539&oldid=34538)

But I would like this contribution on wikivoyage is linked to my wikivoyage user (I use the same user name on both wikis).

How can I opt-in to the transfer of my wikitravel data?

Oliver H (talk) 21:55, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi, Oliver. You'll have to ask at the French Wikivoyage.  Try fr:Wikivoyage:User account migration.  LtPowers (talk) 22:28, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

image:plugs.png
Not sure what to do about image:plugs.png, the correct image is and is tagged for move to commons: but there's an unused, unrelated image already on Commons with the same filename. Their "plugs.png" is a logo plugging "plugs.dreamrow.com", a mentor/apprenticeship which appears non-notable. The only pages actually using "plugs.png" anywhere in Wikimedia are our electrical systems article in various languages, where the logo plugging the other site is useless. K7L (talk) 17:28, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I've nominated the file on Commons for deletion; it is, as you note, just advertising. Our Plugs.png needs a better filename anyway, so I recommend changing the filename when we import it to Commons.  LtPowers (talk) 18:23, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "Electrical_plugs.png" would be a better and more accurate description. Several of the images on w:Mains electricity by country are named "A_plug", "B_Plug", and likewise. AHeneen (talk) 20:06, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

OxygenGuide: Offline Wikivoyage for smartphone/laptop
I just switched OxygenGuide from using Wikitravel data to using Wikivoyage data.

OxygenGuide contains all articles as minimalistic HTML pages, interconnected by the wikilinks, without images. Useful when travelling without an Internet connection. Readable on Android and most systems, it takes 300MB on disk/SD card.

Can I brag that it is the first project to use the Wikimedia-produced datadumps? :-)

Anybody interested in creating Android or iOS apps using this data? I unfortunately have no time to do it because of travelling, but it could be very simple so don't hesitate to try: 1) At first launch download ZIP and unzip it to SD card or equivalent 2) Launch navigation intent to index.html

Nicolas1981 (talk) 01:58, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Voyage/Travel stats for November 25
Stats for 20121125 Number of entries in recent changes edits (including deletions/blocks): WV: 326 WT: 322 Number of article edits: WV: 315 WT: 255 By https://github.com/nicolas-raoul/VoyageVsTravel

Last time, Wikivoyage was receiving 4 times more edits than Wikitravel, so today's result is surprising. I randomly checked 10 Wikitravel diffs, and most of them were good-faith edits. When we graduate from beta we will have to think about how to gain better visibility/attract editors. Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:28, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Adding our logo to the main page of Wikipedia as a sister project will have a big effect. Hopefully we will get some press aswell. Has anyone started writing a press release to send out to newspapers? Jmh649 (talk) 06:37, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * At the moment, all I see is a huge pile of images sitting on the old server tagged "move" or "nowCommons" under some other name, a which is currently &lt;noinclude>d for some reason and a robot replacement of WT templates on 2688 en.WP pages that has been started (initial 50-page test run complete, final approval received today for the rest). The images already tagged need to find their way back into the guide and the link templates on individual WP pages enabled, then we'd have thousands of inbound links and likely a flood of users from Wikipedia. There's also a long list of foreign languages which have Wikipedias where a wikivoyage template needs to be created, manually stuck in place of the wikitravel link on anywhere from a few to a few hundred pages, and the old WT template nominated for deletion. Ultimately, every instance of wikitravel: (the interwiki prefix) needs to be removed (either by conversion to an external link or replacement with a WV link) before a request can be made to delete WT from the interwiki table on meta:
 * This raises a few questions:
 * What is the timeline for moving images which have already been tagged?
 * How many untagged images are left on wts: or on individual-language WV.old wikis? Is anything being done to move images on en.old?
 * What is the timeline to create wikis for languages which existed in WT but aren't yet live on WV? It may be best that Português Wikivoyage actually *exist* before we ask Portuguese Wikipédia to replace their current templated wikitravel: links with wikivoyage:
 * Until these are addressed, a press release would be premature. K7L (talk) 14:31, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The image transfer is mostly done by Stefan2 and MGA73. The Wikivoyage community seems to have very little interest in this process. Questions about the timeline should be probably asked on WTS, but I don't think there is any clear timeline. Two people will spend years.
 * The transfer from en.wikivoyage-old has not started, and I saw very few people doing any tagging or cleanup there.
 * --Alexander (talk) 15:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, I've found the process tedious, and the discussion too scattered to make it easy for a novice to figure out where the process stands and what they can do to help. (There's discussion here on the Pub, on the WTS Pub refuge, and on Commons, and they don't all match.)  As for wikipedia:Template:Wikivoyage-inline and wikipedia:Template:Wikivoyage, the latter I made to display nothing so that we don't get influxes of editors before everything's tidied up here.  It's bad enough with the numbers we did get, and I feel like there are too many edits related to new features and not enough related to getting things into a usable state.  (I guess that goes back to the image-transfer problems.)  LtPowers (talk) 16:28, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm working on getting a good, updated list on how to help.


 * I agree strongly that we're getting bogged down here in non-Beta tasks. The fact that we're getting an influx of new contributors with creative ideas is awesome, and one of the big reasons why I've wanted to move to the WMM for years. But we really do need to get ourselves out of Beta first—launch is the priority. --Peter Talk 16:41, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree that things around the image transfer are messy, but the transfer itself is not as simple as pressing a button. Simple tasks are done by bots. We need humans who understand what is going on and who can invest their time into this very tedious process (hard to make it fun, indeed). Stefan and MGA are open to any questions on WTS. I would eagerly answer here, but few people are asking... --Alexander (talk) 16:56, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I would like to help, but I have had trouble figuring out the process end to end. That said, the some explanation on the items below would be helpful to get me started and possibly others;
 * Where do I look to find images ready for transfer.
 * What needs to be checked prior to transfer (i.e. licensing, naming, etc) and how are they handled.
 * After transfer, what else is need on Commons for the image (i.e. Categories, Original upload logs, etc)
 * After everything is completed on the transfer to commons, is there a process to add the image back to articles on Wikivoyage.
 * If something could be summarized then I would be willing to help. Possibility if someone could mentor or oversee some of the people with minimal experience that might work. Or, if there is just a certain task or set of tasks the would take workload from the more experienced so they could take care of areas where there are more complicated decision points. - Tom Holland (Xltel) (talk) 18:23, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I have replied on your talk page. Others are also welcome to ask questions, and I will explain as much as I can. --Alexander (talk) 19:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I did try to write some instructions at Cleanup, but I'm not good at writing simply. LtPowers (talk) 19:24, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Most often, I will see an image redlink in an article, click to the old version then through to the image, only to find it has already been tagged (if on wts:) or that the tags to mark it "move" or "nowCommons" don't exist (if on en.old). What is the status on these, are they just awaiting a 'bot run or do they require intervention of some sort? K7L (talk) 19:59, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * They are awaiting a bot run. I have clarified what is needed at Cleanup. Overwhelmingly, we need help tagging images, above all else. We should help on Commons with the massive cleanup effort of the data on our files, but the first priority is just identifying what should be moved, so we can move them and then launch. --Peter Talk 20:33, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Some explanations of what is going on:
 * I am running a bot which updates file names if the file name on Commons is different to the file name on Wts. If the file name has been updated, the file should work. I reached the end of all tagged files last week, so the only files to update now are any files which have been tagged since then. When a file is moved to Commons, the original name is usually preserved, so there is very little for my bot to do right now.
 * I have also placed images on Wts in a few useful maintenance categories using a bot.
 * User:MGA73 runs a bot which has copied a lot of files (~20,000?) to Commons from the two shared image repositories. Files have usually been copied to Commons under the same name. However, this might not be immediately reflected on Wikivoyage pages. Even if the files have been copied to Commons, the links may remain red for a while because pages are cached by Mediawiki. In order to see the images, you may need to purge the cache. For example, I went to it:Ebridi esterne. There was a redlinked image, but I purged the cache and then it automatically appeared. You may wish to list a "purge" link in the sitenotice together with the other migration links. Something like [ this] should work. After purging a page, images will appear if they have been moved to Commons. If you don't do anything, the cache will eventually be purged automatically. I think that the cache also is purged automatically if you edit the page.
 * Files which have been copied from Wikivoyage to Commons end up in three maintenance categories (see list at Commons:Commons:Wikitravel Shared transfer task force) because they may need some cleanup by a human. You may help with this cleanup task if you wish, but I would say that it is more urgent to get the files to Commons in the first place so that the red links go away. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:19, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Cleanup tasks update
Please everyone interested in seeing this project leave Beta take a look at Cleanup, which I just cleaned up ;) Above all, right now we need help tagging untagged images and double checking uploads by user. All this is detailed on the cleanup page. Ask questions when you have them, but above all, we just need more users working on this.  --Peter Talk 22:58, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Instrumental! Thanks! ...Um, a weird thing happens in my browser (Firefox 17.0 on Linux): the bold link to Cleanup in the site notice sometimes turns into plain bold *unlinked* text sometimes, upon page load I think, and *not* just when I am on that page. I recall having this experience with site notice *bolded* links "unlinking" on other mediawiki's too. Weird and hardly helpful for a link one is trying to emphasize. Anyone else experiencing this? If yes, please say so and an Admin can maybe work around this apparent bug by unbolding that important link in site notice. So strange--is this sitenotice javascript right? --Rogerhc (talk) 06:42, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Aha, Peter is fast and has already unbolded the link and I'm not having that link trouble now. Thanks Peter! :-) --Rogerhc (talk) 07:26, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Logo round 2
Voting in Round 2 of the Wikivoyage logo vote is underway: Wikivoyage/Logo. Have your say by supporting one or more choices, and/or participating in the discussion! This, that and the other (talk) 08:36, 1 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Just wanted to remind that the second round of voting for the new Wikivoyage logo is coming to an end this Saturday, December 8th. Since this choice will define what each of us will have to look at for quite some time (apart from making the site graphically more or less appealing in general), why not cast your vote? --Mulleflupp (talk) 09:06, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

DotM and OtBP icons
We need new DotM and OtBP icons! Suggestions? --Peter Talk 23:14, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It may depend on what our new logo looks like; if we can borrow design elements, it may help unify the site's look and feel. (Of course, such harmonization is not necessary by any means.)  LtPowers (talk) 00:02, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

RfC on Measurements policy
I'd like to draw your attention to Wikivoyage talk:Measurements and the discussions on Decimal marks/Delimiting and Abbreviations & other miscellaneous policy changes needed. Please make your remarks on that page, not in this section. AHeneen (talk) 06:29, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

OxygenGuide: Now with breadcrumb


I released a new version of OxygenGuide:


 * Breadcrumb
 * Fresh data: Wednesday's Wikivoyage dump
 * Tested on Android & laptop (see screenshot → )

Download Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:13, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Red links even if file is on Commons
Hi. I noticed that some links were red even if the photo was on Commons. When I "poked" the article the red link dissapeared and the photo showed up. I do not know how many cases there is like that and how long it takes for the system to update. But to reduce the number of red links I asked my bot to poke some articles. I hope you can see some improvement in a few hours. --MGA73 (talk) 20:33, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Links stay red until someone purges the cache of the page. --Globe-trotter (talk) 21:15, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * All articles should be purged now. --MGA73 (talk) 06:32, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe it would be a good idea to run a "purge bot" after files have been moved to Commons. However, I don't know how fast the bot would be able to run without crashing the site. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:03, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Inviting editors who supported the RfC
Wondering if we should invite all those who supported the RfC as seen here ? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:25, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * James, mnh... I'm biased as the move is pretty stressful and we already have enough chaos, add several hundred more Wikis and its mayhem Imho it's a good idea before Christmas. Jc8136 (talk) 10:49, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * We should wait with this until the beta period is over. We already have problems now with users 'fixing' red linked images. --Globe-trotter (talk) 13:57, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

OTRS Ticket # 2012120610009328
There is an email in the Sister projects queue filed under OTRS ticket # 2012120610009328 asking about who to contact regarding administrative abuse on the Wikivoyage project. Morgan Kevin J (talk) 19:53, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Morgan, I just now visited above OTRS ticket link and got to a screen that invited me to log in but did not invite me to create a login account, which I don't have, and did not offer any links to any further information about anything. Not very workable. What's up? --Rogerhc (talk) 22:39, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * OTRS is a system used by Wikimedia for handling incoming e-mail. Many of the e-mails may be confidential, and so they can't be read by anyone. According to User:Morgankevinj, someone, unspecified who, has sent an e-mail to Wikimedia regarding administrative abuse, and those who are privileged to read the e-mail can do so at 2012120610009328. Other people, such as you and me, can't read the e-mail at all. In this case, I assume that User:Morgankevinj is trying to find out the answer to the question in the e-mail so that he can write a reply. So, who can be contacted regarding administrative abuse? --Stefan2 (talk) 22:58, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Who would it be for other Wikimedia projects? The stewards? Someone else...? This, that and the other (talk) 00:09, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * There is information on the Wikimedia OTRS process at OTRS. Rjd0060 (talk) 00:50, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The stewards do not have access to said queue ex officio, we have our own queue and generally admin abuse is better addressed either in the local community or publicly on meta. <font color = "darkmagenta">Snowolf <font color = "darkmagenta">How can I help? 00:52, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Most likely "admin abuse" is a euphemism for "I want to appeal my block or ban and mistook OTRS for someone who could arbitrarily overrule this, instead of what it is... a help desk". There are times when contacting OTRS makes sense - the author or photographer of work previously published elsewhere granting permission (or not, instead asking that a copyvio be removed), the subject of a biography asking that unsourced/incorrect information be removed, or enquiries that shouldn't be public such as requests to remove telephone numbers, street addresses and personal info on non-notable persons for privacy reasons. I see no reason why OTRS is a suitable venue to appeal blocks or bans... it's intended for enquiries from non-users or enquiries with real-life contact info that isn't intended to be public. K7L (talk) 00:59, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I suspect you have the gist of it. There is no answer to Morgankevin's question; any contacting that needs doing should be done on-wiki.  LtPowers (talk) 04:02, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The lawyers are aware of the trolling occurring here. It could also simply be a troll trying to bother people. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 21:55, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

By the way, if anyone wants to volunteer to answer emails related to Wikivoyage, the application page is at OTRS/v. The emails info at wikivoyage dot org and wikivoyage at wikimedia dot org were created by the OTRS admins, so they can be posted in relevant places. --Rschen7754 02:50, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * And the place to email any permissions requests is permissions-commons at wikimedia dot org. --Rschen7754 02:54, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Please do not post those emails yet until such time as we have wikivoyagers with access to those queues. <font color = "darkmagenta">Snowolf <font color = "darkmagenta">How can I help? 12:41, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy Birthday Wikivoyage
Wikivoyage is now six years old! On December 10th, 2006 Wikivoyage went online. This year was an interesting one. One year ago at our birthday party in Berlin nobody thought about a collaboration with the old WT community and with the Wikimedia Foundation. Thanks to all travelers and voyagers who help us.

And we have a present: a new logo! --RolandUnger (talk) 16:51, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Lets celebrate this time by having a meetup via IRC. Wouldn't it be a good idea for those of us who can't go to a "real" meetup. --Saqib (talk) 17:32, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm still seeing the old logo. Someone please unwrap the present. --Rogerhc (talk) 18:45, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Do we have a variant of the logo with text ("Wikivoyage" wordmark under the picture) yet?--Eloquence (talk) 19:50, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh, and yes, happy birthday. ;-) --Eloquence (talk) 19:56, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes congrats to everyone. Looking forwards to building, innovating, and become the most used travel resource globally, it might take a couple of years but I bet we can do it :-) Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 20:49, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

The logo needs to pass muster with WMF, and then we need a graphics expert to clean up the graphic and create the versions we need for display on the sites. meta:Talk:Wikivoyage/Logo is the place for that discussion, I think. LtPowers (talk) 00:46, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Change the wikivoyage-old.org sitenotice to point to new site.
Congratulations on the launch! http://en.wikivoyage-old.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice says there's a new site, but doesn't link to it. I think an admin could usefully change it. -- Skierpage (talk) 20:44, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

still edit?
If u call me a pcv then why haven't you blocked me yet? I like to contribute but if ur just going to revert everything i add whats the point? --Dortmund (talk) 18:09, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

special:shortpages, stubs and outlines
We seem to have many pages which were imported from WT but contain nothing but "X is a city in Y" and an empty template. These should be simply deleted. I'm aware that, in the past, these have been redirected to the closest place that does have an article, but retaining the (basicly empty) WT revision history for these stubs is not desirable as it means having to give attribution to WT editors when there's nothing useful there to attribute. The "X is in Y" empty skeleton also looks worse to a user reading the site than honestly admitting we don't yet have any listings or data for X. I realise that keeping these is a way to inflate the page count for the wiki, but really don't see this as worthwhile. K7L (talk) 22:25, 14 December 2012 (UTC)


 * How would deleting them be an improvement? This way it's easier for users to add information to an article. --Globe-trotter (talk) 23:36, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * This gives new editors a template to build upon. We had a bot on Wikipedia that created around 100,000 articles based on a simple template. Real people than eventually came along and filled many of them in. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 00:40, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * w:user:Rambot? Spam, utter spam... and consensus on en.WP was to stop doing this sometime around 2006, IIRC. K7L (talk) 01:32, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * How many are we talking here? A lot of the ones on Special:Shortpages are disambiguation pages.  LtPowers (talk) 22:04, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Ending Beta
→ Important! --Peter Talk 23:09, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I am thinking first or second week of Jan 2013 would be good. Hopefully we can get the most important stuff done. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 00:29, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Have begun a press release here User:Jmh649/Press_release. Please join in editing it. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 19:42, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that you should refrain from listing an official launch date in User:Jmh649/Press release until the date is cut in stone. Someone might read the page and think that the date is official and cut in stone, which could cause issues if the date is changed later. Just list "DATE" and replace it with the correct date when we know that the date won't change. Also, I suggest that you include a statement at the top that the press release still is a draft. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:20, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Great points. Everyone is free to jump in and begin editing. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 03:59, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well...you invited, so I've made a bunch of changes. Hopefully it sound a bit more PR-release-like with the intro consisting of "Wikivoyage is..." and "The Wikimedia Foundation is..." and touching on lots of relevant subjects (goals, mission, license) and incorporating as many inter-wiki links to relevant topics as I could. The section on the WMF could use some in-line links to their wiki (wikimediafoundation.org/wiki...not meta) touching on relevant policies, goals, etc that could be included. The history section was included to be more thorough and incorporates info gathered from Wikitravel as well as the Wikivoyage page on Wikipedia. I don't really think info regarding the IB lawsuit belongs in such a press release. The references section needs a bit of polishing. I didn't bother putting in references (except in copy/pasted text from WP) and it wouldn't hurt to fill the release with references. AHeneen (talk) 06:29, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

WikiVoyage and Wikipedia:WikiProject Hiking trails
Originally posted at Talk:Main Page.

What should the relationship be between WikiVoyage and the Hiking trails project of Wikipedia? Should they remain independent, so that itineraries might/should/must be described in both? Should they merge somehow? Should the Hiking trails project be brought over to WikiVoyage? Are there any legal or technical obstacles to that? If the tweo remain independent, should the Wikipedia more focus on encyclopedic articles and less on detailed descriptions as are now found in the featured articles? DrMennoWolters (talk) 18:53, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * In my opinion the majority of the details on how to hike the trail should be here. Hopefully the projects can work close together. This is one of the primary reasons for us (the Wikimedia Movement) inviting WV/WT to join us. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 18:56, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Please, move this discussion to the pub. It has nothing to do with the main page. --Alexander (talk) 20:17, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Revision deletion of inappropriate username
Hi guys! Just to let you know per a notification on the Wikivoyage-l mailing list, I've "rev deleted" the edits of this extremely graphic username which means that this username will no longer show up in the edit history of the page. For example, if you look at [//en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=User:(WT-en)_Rein_N.&action=history the history] of User:(WT-en) Rein N.'s user page, you can see at 13:19 on May 2009 there is a "username removed" and "edit summary" removed. I've done this for all of the edits as the edit summaries were the names of the inappropriate pages Grawp moved the pages to. This means that the information about these edits will not be viewable to normal users, but will be viewable to admins (typically used to check why the revision was deleted), and can thus be reverted too if an admin makes a mistake incorrectly deleting a revision. If you have any questions/concerns, please feel free to let me know. The helpful  one  11:04, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I've redacted the username; no need to trumpet it here at the Pub as long as we're hiding it on history pages. =)  LtPowers (talk) 15:23, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, I'm tempted to delete the user page; there's nothing on it except the import notice and the user never made any useful contributions -- and they're all hidden now anyway. LtPowers (talk) 15:24, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * What are other WMF project's policies for "rev deletion"? I'm moderately uncomfortable with hiding edit history as anyone viewing that history will wonder what specifically was changed or is missing, but other projects have obviously had more time to work out policies on this issue so it would be good to know what guidelines they've come up with for using this feature. -- Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 18:44, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * As long as the user's edits were reverted, the credits feature of MediaWiki shouldn't include their name. At least, that's my understanding from working on Wikitravel Press back in the day. --Peter Talk 00:02, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia's rev delete policy is here: w:WP:REVDEL. – sumone10154 ( talk ) 04:00, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Requests for comment
This is just a heads up notice, and can be deleted after a couple days.

Hopefully everyone is aware that there is a Requests for comment page, with links to ongoing discussion that require more review. Ideally, policy discussions should take place on policy talk pages and article discussions should take place on article talk pages. Lately, it seems that all discussions are taking place here, in the pub. That's not ideal, and creates a lot of work for the janitorial team, most of whom shirk sweeping duty anyway ;)

Let's please try to get back in the habit of discussing things where they are relevant, and using the rfc page as needed to draw attention to important discussions. --Peter Talk 23:25, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Finishing the discussion regarding the new logo
Please weight in here on meta. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:46, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas
and I hope we all have a wonderful 2013! -- <font color="#0000DD">A <font color="#0066FF">l <font color="#0099FF">i <font color="#00CCFF">c <font color="#00EEFF">e <font color="#FF3333">✉ 05:51, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Second that :-) Looking forwards to an exciting new year. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 07:13, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Merry Christmas everyone. I would suggest having happy holidays greetings on the main page. --Saqib (talk) 09:47, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Merry Christmas! Ypsilon (talk) 14:13, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Greetings from the German WV community
I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas time. How is WV going here? I know everybody is busy to clean up the wikis and bring the articles up and running. I want to say thank you to all of you guys for your energy to help driving everything forward - from your first idea of the reunification to the point where we are now. Is there anything we can help with? We think our wiki will be ok within a fortnight.

The WV association is about to apply as a thematic organisation. One of our main objectives is a closer collaboration between the language versions. Maybe we can gather some ideas after the official start. Peter had some nice ideas when we talked in Washinton. Everybody is invited to participate via mailing list and Meta wiki. The WV association wants to become more international. An English member application form is available (The Italian one will be available soon). More information about us on the Meta Wiki. Two new ideas could be: Only two ideas.... But first: Party! I wish everybody a nice transition to the new year 2013! -- DerFussi (talk) 07:45, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * A list about star articles in every language version. Its a suggestion of Peter. So the authors have an easy access to valuable information, if they want to copy (I don't know the right word, what pupils somtimes do during an exam: looking at their neighbours sheet) How is it called?
 * Maybe we can start a map making project. One of our new contributors has some nice things done.. Click on the old map on the right side here ......
 * That's a simply stunning idea with the town plans! I love maps and only wish I could draw them, Stefan. Have a great New Year! -- <font color="#0000DD">A <font color="#0066FF">l <font color="#0099FF">i <font color="#00CCFF">c <font color="#00EEFF">e <font color="#FF3333">✉ 08:11, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * A mapping project would be a good idea. Not creating map graphics but being able to plot points of interest and routes to external mapping sites would be very useful. Functions similar to GeoGroup and Attached KML on Wikipedia. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:14, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * We should invite open street maps to join in. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 09:06, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Fussi, I like the map trick. How is it done? &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 09:38, 28 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I like the map trick too, but how would it work for offline use...print or PDF for e-reader/tablet/laptop? I've tried to create maps, but find these programs has a steep learning curve. It would be really nice if someone could create videos and upload them to Commons (does Commons host videos? Maybe YouTube then). Making it easier to create maps would really help new users to expand the number of maps here. If not videos, at least look through the How to draw a map page and make sure all the steps are still the same...the software hasn't changed so that some steps are now done differently. Another idea would be to add lots of screenshots to go with most steps. AHeneen (talk) 22:48, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You can take a look at w:en:WP:USRD/MTF and see the tutorial that a project on the English Wikipedia uses for creating road maps, if that's helpful. --Rschen7754 17:32, 29 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I just noticed this is taking about maps, as I was asking about it!. OSM / Wikimedia have two MediaWiki plug ins, one that allows placement of an OSM segment on a page, and another that lets you drop down a map from co-ordinates. The latter is already implemented on Wikipedia. JimKillock (talk) 13:52, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I think we should find some interested guys and create a project. It should be more than just to place a map in the article. Laying points of interests and routes on it would be nice. Let's start gathering some ideas after the press release. The guy from WV/de who created it likes to join this group. I'll let you know. Commons supports videos but only with free codec. So smart phone/iPhone videos will not work, I think. Besides I would vote against videos on WV. It can cause endless discussions.. which one to take? bad video - good video. Why do you remove this video and not that? YouTube is a better place for private holiday videos... (just a very personal opinion - not the one of WV) -- DerFussi (talk) 12:30, 31 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The suggestion regarding videos was for a tutorial on how to create maps. I do not think videos for most other reasons (destination pages, etc) would be appropriate. I haven't spent much time trying to make maps since this discussion started, but w:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Maps and w:Wikipedia:Graphic_Lab/Resources/Tutorials look very helpful. AHeneen (talk) 04:11, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with much of what has been said. Firstly, a page on Meta listing star articles would be very useful and enable a much higher standard among all the languages. Secondly, a new cross-wiki partnership for maps sound great. We definitely need to create a single standard in all the language versions in terms of symbols, colours, design, etc. Now that a logo has been decided upon, we should simply use the colours of the logo. I like what that contributor did on the German Wikivoyage. Something we'd need to decide upon is the numbering system. Does each section get separate numbering like the example, or continuous numbering? The latter is better for colour-blind people and also for black and white printing. On the topic of printing, it should be possible. We should contact OpenStreetMap and state out intentions for closer collaboration. Maybe one possibility is a new "layer". Go to and see the option in the top-right corner as an example. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA   <font color="#191970">>talk 10:33, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * "We definitely need to create a single standard in all the language versions in terms of symbols, colours, design, etc." Why?
 * "Now that a logo has been decided upon, we should simply use the colours of the logo." Maybe not a good idea considering how many people said "Well we can always change the logo colors later." Besides, the colors in the new logo are widely disparate in hue; that will not make for good-looking maps.  LtPowers (talk) 14:47, 2 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I thought creating a cross-wiki standard would be a given. Why confuse readers by having no set standard like we did in the past? Why go backwards? Now that WV-de is here, there are going to be skilled mapmakers on that site who use their colour schemes, and skilled mapmakers on here who use our traditional WT one. If we want the maps to be easily adaptable to different languages so that just the words need to be modified, then the colour and symbol scheme should stay constant. <font color="#4682b4">JamesA  <font color="#191970">>talk 08:18, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Question for the German WV
I notice in the article you referenced that it is using the IsInKat template which creates the breadcrumb sub-title like the IsPartOf template here but also places the article in a category of the same region. This is a good way of identifying articles that are of a region but not always listed on the region article page. Creating the template is easy but how did you generate all the categories with the right hierarchy? Creating these manually would be a big task! --Traveler100 (talk) 05:48, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
 * We create it manually.... :( ..... We would not need them, but of course WMF project users are familiar with that and want them. There are some things that can help. I create navigation boxes for my articles (see Sabah) The towns have them as well (Poring). They are helpfull for the readers to find all towns in a region, and even see the previous featured articles. The templates provide the categories as well. I have to check every article anyway (remving shared, adding interwiki, addings WP and commons) so I add the navi boxes as well. They can help in generating the categories. Look at Vietnam. All provinces (a lot) have the navi box already. Just add the category the navi box template. Immediately you will find all needed province categories on the special page "wanted categories". I have an firefox add-on. I can mark several links on a website with an rectangle and have all links opened in a separate tabs with one click. Now I place the same text to every tab/article. It is still manually but quite fast. By using the navi boxes for categorizing you can switch easily. Either you put a province to the country category or the province category or both. Just by adapting the statement in the navi template. Now I am working through my favourite region Southeast Asia.... We miss our old location database.... -- DerFussi (talk) 12:31, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Besides all that... :) ... The Wikipedians are the ones who wants to have the categories. They can help a bit in doing it :). So I am not keen to categorize the articles. When I look through the articles I add them, but its not on my priority list. -- DerFussi (talk) 12:54, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well we could at least help with the manual creation of categories. Have create proposal in IsPartOf sandbox which either adds article to existing category or place a link in the article to create one.--Traveler100 (talk) 15:29, 31 December 2012 (UTC)