Wikivoyage talk:Cruising Expedition

(transferred from traveller's pub)

Would you welcome boater's information.
Congratulations on Wikivoyage. Cruising boaters like me have long wanted a way to crowdsource our own experiences and tips. Until now, the only way we had to do it was to write articles for each other. I don't need to tell you about the advantages of a wiki article as compared to a dead tree article.

We have large boating organizations, and we have large archives of travel information written by boaters for boaters. How large? Maybe 100,000 articles. I for one would like to start encouraging boaters and boating organizations to start writing for wikivoyage and/or migrating some of their past content to wikivoyage. Before doing that, I want assurance that wikivoyage is interested in such specialized information, and is ready to accomodate the very specialized interests and habits of boaters such as:

1) We identify places by lat/lon or by other navigational information rather than political entity. For example, Peck Lake, on the Intracoastal Waterway is an important destination for boaters.  It can not be reached by car.  I have article on Peck Lake but I have no idea which county/town/city it falls within.

2) A description of a place must include how to get there on the water. We cite water depths, tides, buoy numbers, drawbridge schedules and lots of other technical information. Boaters need to see that stuff in an article.  Should it be included in wikivoyage?

2) A destination is a place to leave our boat, an anchorage or a marina. A city like Miami may have be thought of as a dozen or more destinations by boaters, not a city.  They may be idenfied as Bay this, or Cove that, or just by lat/lon.

3) Some destinations we never go on shore at all. Others we do, and they are identified by where we can land boats or dinghies.  Points of interest are limited to those places within walking distance or public transportation of the landing spot.  Again, that is why a large place like Miami may be though of as dozens of independent destinations by boaters.

4)A place like Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River would be included as 1000 articles, one on each island. On a global scale, there are probably 2,000,000 islands that boaters know about.

5) The things that interest boaters, such as where to buy boating equipment and repairs mayu be too specialized to be of interest to most wikivoyage users. Should specialized data be excluded?

6) Take an example, Shelburne Farms Vermont. There is no wikivoyage article on that yet.  I could create one telling how to get there by boat, how to go ashore, and what you can see, but I have no idea of how the public driving cars can get there.  I think those arriving by car have to pay admission, but I'm not sure of that.  Would wikivoyage rather that I hold off creating an article on this place, until it is described in a more general less specialized way of getting there?   What happens if Shelburne Farms does not want it to be known that boaters can visit for free, bypassing admission fees?

I'm sure there are other specialized groups with similarly unique interests and needs. Only mountain climbers can visit the summit of Everest. The general question is does wikivoyage embrace these specialized communities, or is it written only for the public mainstream?

I'm excited about the possibilities and I hope that wikivoyage replies that it would welcome specialized input from boaters. —The preceding comment was added by User:Tarwathie (talk • contribs)


 * Just as an aside
 * We've touched on this with general aviation before too. There are lots of ways to Get in available to GA that we usually omit from this section in the articles.  I think it would be nice to include, but how to present this very specialised information so it doesn't swamp the other content.  So, GA information is largely missing from the guide.
 * But with diving (also specialised) it has worked well, because the geography that defines a dive site makes the dive information fit better. The article is exclusive.
 * Anyway, I think the answer is that at the moment, you could certainly add a by boat, or whatever to the logistical get in section without an issue. You could also develop a Thousand Islands by boat travel topic that would fit.  The other information I'd like to think could have a home, but I'm not sure where.  --Inas (talk) 21:46, 17 January 2013 (UTC)


 * "Get in" &rarr; "By boat" and "Get around" &rarr; "By boat" exist. We have Thousand Islands, but as one article and not 1800 pages. It does include marinas and boat rentals on both countries' mainland ("get in") if needed to get to the area. Wellesley Island State Park rents boats at its marina; that's in our Thousand Islands article (although a business with a campground and a marina is either "get around" or "sleep", we don't list them twice). We also have cruising on small craft as a travel topic. There is provision for lat="" and long="" decimal GPS co-ordinates as fields in all individual listings, although they're currently not displayed. We also have geo as the co-ordinates at city level. The question of how location should be displayed in an individual listing is still open; most likely these will link to OpenStreetMap in some form, much like the existing city co-ordinates. I don't know of a free, open content chart for marine navigation.
 * For general aviation, we usually will indicate if there is a runway (and list IATA/ICAO codes if available, for instance Rome (New York) has no scheduled flights but the airport is in "get in". We don't have the detail on runway length/direction, beacons or air traffic control that'd be on an aeronautical reference but we do mention that yes, you could fly there on a private plane or get in by boat using the Erie Canal.
 * I believe we have an itinerary for the Rideau Canal but haven't checked how much navigational info is there. If we have Space and the Moon as destinations, why not?
 * An article like Sackets Harbor will list fishing charters as activities ("do") and I recall marinas appearing in Westport (Ontario) and Cobourg as wi-fi hotspots ("contact"). If an attraction like Boldt Castle or the 1000 Islands Playhouse has docks for small boats, that's mentioned as part of its regular listing ("see" or "do" in this case). For something like Shelburne Farms, we'd want contact info - street address, telephone numbers - so you would need to look them up online before adding them to an individual city or large rural area's page. Include lat/long and mention if there are any docks if you like. K7L (talk) 21:51, 17 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I think it comes down to how to do it best. It may be best done on a dedicated boating wiki with its own recent changes, left sidebar links, administrators who understand its boating related design and how it works, and users who can find what they come for because it is focused on boating. Another alternative to imagine would be a Boating namespace on Wikivoyage that might help sort out what is general travel stuff and what is boating stuff, but I don't think that would be near as satisfying for either group as simply having a specifically boating focused wiki, or maybe more specifically, a cruiser's (boat traveler's) wiki. Any good ones online yet? --Rogerhc (talk) 22:34, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That said, I have a lot of respect for both Pashley's and Peter's understanding of where thing go on Wikivoyage. They are more familiar with this than I am. With their guidance I'm sure boaters can find ways to contribute articles on boating specific travel appropriately on Wikivoyage. Follow their guidance, below, and it will work out well. --Rogerhc (talk) 00:46, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes! Boating info would be quite welcome. For starters, Cruising on small craft needs help and boating-related info could be added to other articles as outlined above.

Have a look at Diving and its many child articles for some ways to deal with issues like what goes in an overview vs articles on particular sites, in "diving in Thailand" vs "Thailand" and the articles on towns, and how all those link together. Pashley (talk) 23:09, 17 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, yes, yes, and more yes! I would love to see our boating information improved. A straight import of thousands of articles probably wouldn't work out well, though. One of the best ways of incorporating boating information would be similar to how we handle extensive dive guides, like Diving the Cape Peninsula and False Bay (I see now that Pashley is saying the same thing). Having articles like Cruising the Virgin Islands, Cruising the Adriatic,Boating on the Saint Lawrence, etc., would be fantastic additions to our current content. --Peter Talk 23:41, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I, too, would like to see more boating info on our pages. The major issue seems to be that there will likely be conflicts with What is an article? & Bodies of water if boater-specific info (like navigating channels) needs to be on its own page. Would all such articles be travel topics by default and we still wouldn't allow articles about a body of water?AHeneen (talk) 00:39, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * What is an article? & Bodies of water both specifically indicate that itineraries and travel topics are the exceptions to the general rule that a body of water doesn't get a city-level article. K7L (talk) 01:33, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, but what I meant was that there may be instances in which the new article might be better suited as a destination guide rather than a travel topic...like Wikivoyage Harbor or Wikivoyage Sound where there may not be a suitable town/region to put such information in. AHeneen (talk) 02:01, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * St. John's Harbour is a city... does it make any sense to take a harbour contained entirely within one town and turn it into a separate article? Usually we want to cover the whole town (waterfront and all) on one page, unless it's huge. Certainly there are hydrographic features that won't fit within a town, Boating on Lake Champlain would cross into Québec/NY/VT. Currently, Lake Champlain (destination) would only get disambiguated but Boating on Lake Champlain (travel topic) would be fair game. Maybe keeping the "Boating on..." prefix makes sense to distinguish these travel topics from dive guides, which also are travel topics for bodies of water. I can't see a wiki with "voyage" in its name managing to avoid this question. :) K7L (talk) 04:27, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Exactly—if sailing strange waters isn't travel, then I don't know what is. Maybe I'm starting to like our new name ;) --Peter Talk 05:37, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Specific replies
Hi Tarwathie, I will try to address each of your queries. There will be a lot more to discuss - I will start to set up the expedition. &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 05:20, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) I think that this is an ideal site for an extensive and comprehensive cruising guide. It is certainly within the extended scope of our guiding principles.
 * 2) The article format should be discussed and agreed before mass import of articles. This will save an enormous amount of effort reformatting later.
 * 3) This is such a potentially huge extension to the current guide that I propose a new project: Cruising expedition to deal with the logistics and formatting aspects. I was deeply involved in the Dive guide development, and there are similarities, but probably also big differences.
 * 4) The bodies of water policy will have to be very different for boating. I envisage a geographical hierarchy for cruising waters in parallel to the current system for bodies of land.
 * 5) Things like anchorages, navigational hazards, landing places, moorings, hauling facilities, chandleries, shops with easy access by water etc would be of great value and should be arranged in a standardised article format.
 * 6) Links between regular destinations and cruising destinations should be formalised and standardised. There will be overlap in some cases, but also a lot of articles in both guides which have no corresponding article in the other.
 * 7) There is scope for destination articles (in many cases combined with regular destinations, but not always), Itineraries (like the ARC), and travel topics. The only area where there is no real scope for a parallel article category is phrasebooks, as any necessary material can simply be included in a boating related section of existing phrasebooks.
 * 8) It would be very useful if you could link to a few examples, and/or create a dummy article to play around with section formatting.
 * I agree with every point here, and think Peter S. is the most experienced person in setting up this kind of thing, as he has pioneered our dive guides. I'll happily join the expedition, although my fairly limited cruising experience will limit my ability to contribute much more than organizational advice. --Peter Talk 05:34, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Some other angles on this subject
There is already a http://www.cruiserswiki.org and the site http://www.noonsite.com that serves this community. I have been lurking a bit around on both for some time as I'm also interested in cruising.

Cruiserswiki is quite inconsistent in its quality. Some pages are very good and up to date, some are mere sceletons while some are out of date. I just took a look at the recent changes log, and the community seems to be more active than I expected. I'm a bit puzzled with respect to what license they are using. The disclaimer on the bottom of every page says CC 3.0 while http://www.cruiserswiki.org/wiki/CruisersWiki:Copyrights links to CC by-nc-sa 2.5 while also mentioning GFDL 1.2. If they licensing could be sorted out it may be interesting to start a dialogue with the cruiserswiki community whether they might want to migrate their work to this site?

Noonsite is more of a traditional site and seems to be of a more consistent quality, but still seems to get their information from their users.

Both sites have a relatively uniform way of structuring their information which might be used for inspiration in defining a standard format for cruising area articles.

My general analysis of Pros and Cons are:
 * From the viewpoint of the cruising community:
 * There is a great benefit to being able to leverage all the general travel information on Wikivoyage. Especially all the Country pages will be useful to this target audience and will likely be more updated than on a dedicated cruising wiki. Visa information, internet and telephony information, currency information and similar practical information is common to both communities.
 * The cruiser community might leverage the existing work on the Offline_reader_Expedition. Having easy access to getting fresh travel information as an offline dump will be very appreciated by cruisers.
 * The cruising community might be harmed by the work on collecting and updating information being spread on yet another site.


 * From the viewpoint of the existing Wikivoyage community
 * This is very specialized information, and it is an open question how well we can integrate it without bloating existing articles and in that way making them less attractive to other groups of travellers.
 * Attracting the Cruising community would provide more sources for obtaining updates to existing articles.

Mads.bahrt (talk) 16:49, 18 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I think the way to avoid bloating general-purpose travel articles that are already long with highly specialized boating information is to have separate travel topics on boating to particular destinations and including a link to them in the general-purpose articles about the same destinations. I'm not highly knowledgeable about boating, but I would think that a major warm-water port like Miami would be ripe for this kind of bifurcation between the existing general-purpose article and one or more boating-specific topics. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:17, 18 January 2013 (UTC)


 * The sites you mention might be added at List of related projects. I'm not sure if policy is to add only open license sites there, though I think it should be. Pashley (talk) 02:41, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll try to drum up interest at SSCA
The Seven Seas Cruising Association (SSCA) is one of the largest such organizations around. It has more than 10000 members. The SSCA Bulletin is what I had in mind when I mentioned a large archive of cruising guide articles.

I'm a member of SSCA. I'll post a note on their forum proposing that their members should come here and start a discussion.

I think the possibilities are exciting. We boaters have a long tradition of sharing information. There are many reasons why a wiki is an excellent way to do that. Tarwathie (talk) 20:20, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Related articles
Talk:Cruising on small craft lists a few that might be of interest. Pashley (talk) 03:10, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

SSCA Initial response
I've responded to the topic on the SSCA Forum ( http://forum.ssca.org ).

I'm happy to engage here as well, although a single thread might be of greater value.

SSCA provides a mechanism to share information directly and through partnerships with others. I haven't seen a successful Wiki in the space of cruising information. I'm prepared to be educated.

sail fast and eat well, dave Dave Skolnick S/V Auspicious SSCA President —The preceding comment was added by Daveskolnick (talk • contribs)

69.255.57.14 17:07, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Darn - grabbed between the cookies and the learning curve. Daveskolnick (talk) 17:08, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

An article moved from Wikipedia
Cruising (maritime) requires the TLC of members here. &mdash; Ravikiran (talk) 03:53, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Archived
This expedition has been archived because it has not had any recent activity. If anyone wishes to reactivate it then please give notice in the Travellers' pub --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:44, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The article Cruising on small craft exists. One might also contribute there or start a discussion on its talk page. Pashley (talk) 01:53, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Reignite boating
I missed this talk page and added discussion to format talk page. I mainly discuss format of additions. I'm ready to "plunge in". Created sandbox page for Puerto Vallarta to try discussed formats for additional content.

Request comment.

Iowajason (talk) 01:44, 18 July 2016 (UTC)