Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Mark Jaroski]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 16:16, Michael Peel
wrote:

> It's not just you; the Wiki Travel Guide emails are also appearing in
> multiple email threads for me. And they're all over the place in the
> archive:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2012-April/thread.html
>
> Might be an issue with the list settings?
>

It's an issue with the fact that those of us who just joined the list for
this discussion didn't have the in-reply-to header set.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Michael Peel]

It's not just you; the Wiki Travel Guide emails are also appearing in multiple 
email threads for me. And they're all over the place in the archive:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2012-April/thread.html

Might be an issue with the list settings?

Thanks,
Mike
P.S. This project sounds great to me, clearly in-scope for a Wikimedia project.

On 11 Apr 2012, at 20:32, Anirudh Bhati wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Is it just me or are we all getting email responses out of the original
> threads?
> 
> Best
> 
> 
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 1:00 AM, James Heilman  wrote:
> 
>> @Yaroslov
>> 1) A merger within a WMF project  is supported by admins from both WT and
>> WV. WV is going to be meeting on the possibility of merging June 9th in
>> Germany
>> 
>> 2) Wikimedia's mission is to provide freely available educational content I
>> am not sure which "WMF principles" you do not see such a site as being
>> compatible with? You mention that a good travel guide selects information.
>> A good encyclopedia sections information as well. I am not sure why we
>> would encounter any differences? We deal with spam here on Wikipedia all
>> the time.
>> 
>> 2a) Not catering to a specific audience is one of the criticisms of
>> Wikipedia. The proposed travel guide would write for a general audience.
>> Wikipedia has written for a general audience with some success.
>> 
>> --
>> James Heilman
>> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
>> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:30:45 -0600, James Heilman wrote:

@Yaroslov
1) A merger within a WMF project  is supported by admins from both WT 
and
WV. WV is going to be meeting on the possibility of merging June 9th 
in

Germany

2) Wikimedia's mission is to provide freely available educational 
content I
am not sure which "WMF principles" you do not see such a site as 
being
compatible with? You mention that a good travel guide selects 
information.
A good encyclopedia sections information as well. I am not sure why 
we
would encounter any differences? We deal with spam here on Wikipedia 
all

the time.

2a) Not catering to a specific audience is one of the criticisms of
Wikipedia. The proposed travel guide would write for a general 
audience.

Wikipedia has written for a general audience with some success.


I actually do not have an opinion on whether Wikitravel should or 
should not be accepted as a WMF prtoject (I am currently leaning to the 
opinion it should). I just pointed out obvious problems. I maintain a 
travel guide website since 2004, and I know the issues are not so easy 
to resolve, especially the audience. This is why they have so many 
printed guidebook series IRL, and this is why I only used two or three 
of these series in my life (and other travelers use something else and 
under no circumstances would use what I use). These issues should be 
analyzed very carefully before the actual decision has been made.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Anirudh Bhati]

Hello,

Is it just me or are we all getting email responses out of the original
threads?

Best


On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 1:00 AM, James Heilman  wrote:

> @Yaroslov
> 1) A merger within a WMF project  is supported by admins from both WT and
> WV. WV is going to be meeting on the possibility of merging June 9th in
> Germany
>
> 2) Wikimedia's mission is to provide freely available educational content I
> am not sure which "WMF principles" you do not see such a site as being
> compatible with? You mention that a good travel guide selects information.
> A good encyclopedia sections information as well. I am not sure why we
> would encounter any differences? We deal with spam here on Wikipedia all
> the time.
>
> 2a) Not catering to a specific audience is one of the criticisms of
> Wikipedia. The proposed travel guide would write for a general audience.
> Wikipedia has written for a general audience with some success.
>
> --
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[James Heilman]

@Yaroslov
1) A merger within a WMF project  is supported by admins from both WT and
WV. WV is going to be meeting on the possibility of merging June 9th in
Germany

2) Wikimedia's mission is to provide freely available educational content I
am not sure which "WMF principles" you do not see such a site as being
compatible with? You mention that a good travel guide selects information.
A good encyclopedia sections information as well. I am not sure why we
would encounter any differences? We deal with spam here on Wikipedia all
the time.

2a) Not catering to a specific audience is one of the criticisms of
Wikipedia. The proposed travel guide would write for a general audience.
Wikipedia has written for a general audience with some success.

-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[emijrp]

2012/4/11 John Vandenberg 

> I agree that travel content is within the scope.  In addition to the
> content itself, which helps other people, the process of writing and
> communicating travel information is educational for the writer.
>
> There was a session about WikiTravel on at RCC2011 Canberra, where the
> need to change host was discussed, and forking generally was
> discussed.
>
>
> https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/University_of_Canberra/RCC2011/All_about_Wikitravel
>
> The wikiteam dumps of wikitravel are a bit old now; is someone working
> on making fresh dumps publicly available?
> https://code.google.com/p/wikiteam/downloads/list?can=2&q=wikitravel
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/wikiteam-discuss/0gSFlnxeKOo/discussion
>
>
Hi;

Furthermore, WikiTravel dumps generated by WikiTeam include only the last
revision for every article. WikiTravel server is a bit weak, and full
history exports fail.

We would like to download a full dump if available.

Regards,
emijrp

-- 
Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada. E-mail: emijrp AT gmail DOT com
Pre-doctoral student at the University of Cádiz (Spain)
Projects: AVBOT  |
StatMediaWiki
| WikiEvidens  |
WikiPapers
| WikiTeam 
Personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/emijrp/
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Delphine Ménard]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 1:48 PM, Peter Coombe
 wrote:
[snip]
>
> No Original Research shouldn't be an issue, we already have Wikinews
> accepting original reporting.
>
> Neutral Point of View might be a more delicate area. You probably
> couldn't write a travel guide using the same standards of NPOV as used
> on Wikipedia, and if you could it would most likely be very dull. As
> far as I know all the existing projects follow some form of NPOV, but
> it isn't actually enshrined in the Foundation's mission statement,
> vision or values.


I was thinking about this idea of NPOV and I'm thinking that trying to
apply NPOV to a travel guide (and here I'm just thinking about the
"what to visit" part of it, rather than "which hotel to stay in" or
such can go in two directions.

First, I can imagine, as you say that using some kind of NPOV might
make the travel guide dull, because it'd end up listing about 300 tiny
things to see in one small location, and you'd lose the edge of
knowing "what to really see". On the other hand, I can imagine that
allowing not-so-known locations to be integrated in a travel guide
because of NPOV (everything gets to be there, if it exists, basically)
could be also extremely interesting in allowing people to travel
differently, and bring them to admire that
never-mentioned-in-a-normal-travel-guide monument or go and see that
extremely-interesting-for-its-time-but-made-by-a-nobody statue that no
other guide bothers to list because well, it's not a Michelangelo
thing.

Something of an attention to detail that I can see Wiki communities
having as opposed to larger established travel guides that keep on
telling you to do the same things everyone else does.

I am not advocating for or against NPOV for a Wiki travel guide, I'm
just thinking outloud at what would be the challenges of taking it in
or leaving it out.

Cheers,


Delphine
-- 
@notafish

NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost.
Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org
Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto - http://photo.notafish.org

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:19:05 +0200, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

Hoi,
 you are providing a perfect reason why you might contribute to 
a WMF

based travel wiki... No adds 
Thanks,
 Gerard



Yes, this is actually correct.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
 you are providing a perfect reason why you might contribute to a WMF
based travel wiki... No adds 
Thanks,
 Gerard

On 11 April 2012 17:16, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:

> If you're serious about seeing it become the next Wikimedia sister project,
>> I'd focus on making a better case for how it falls within Wikimedia's
>> scope.
>>
>> MZMcBride
>>
>>
>>  The scope has been extensively discussed in this thread, and a
> convincing answer has been given. This answer is that travel is an avenue
> of education, possibly a more important one than an encyclopedia (since
> visual impressions are the strongest), and everything which promotes
> educational travel thus falls within the scope of the movement.
>
> There are however other issues which were also discussed.
>
> 1. The existence of two projects, Wikitravel and Wikivoyage, with unclear
> position of both communities concerning the unification in general, and the
> unification under the WMF umbrella in particular.
>
> 2. A good travel guide usually selects information. For instance, a list
> of all resturants in Paris is useless. A list with comments or a star-rated
> list is more useful, but the most useful is  star-rated selection which
> only contains a very limited number of entries. It is not clear whether
> such selection is compatible with WMF principles, and if not, why do we
> want to have a useless project (which potentially will be dominated by the
> entries of the restaurants themselves). I note however that one of the
> functions of an encyclopaedia is selection of encyclopaedic information,
> and this is why we have these perennial battles about notability).
>
> 2a. A good travel guide caters to specific audience - e.g. backpackers,
> retirees, or adventure travelers. If it attempts catering to all travellers
> at the same time, it becomes useless.
>
> 3. My personal impression (of somebody who has an advanced knowledge of a
> subject) is that Wikitravel is just a very poor travel guide. For standard
> places like Paris it can not currently beat any of the major travel series.
> For non-standard places, it contains nothing. May be this is fixable, I do
> not know. However, the real reason I never contributed to Wikitravel are
> ads.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

If you're serious about seeing it become the next Wikimedia sister 
project,
I'd focus on making a better case for how it falls within Wikimedia's 
scope.


MZMcBride


The scope has been extensively discussed in this thread, and a 
convincing answer has been given. This answer is that travel is an 
avenue of education, possibly a more important one than an encyclopedia 
(since visual impressions are the strongest), and everything which 
promotes educational travel thus falls within the scope of the movement.


There are however other issues which were also discussed.

1. The existence of two projects, Wikitravel and Wikivoyage, with 
unclear position of both communities concerning the unification in 
general, and the unification under the WMF umbrella in particular.


2. A good travel guide usually selects information. For instance, a 
list of all resturants in Paris is useless. A list with comments or a 
star-rated list is more useful, but the most useful is  star-rated 
selection which only contains a very limited number of entries. It is 
not clear whether such selection is compatible with WMF principles, and 
if not, why do we want to have a useless project (which potentially will 
be dominated by the entries of the restaurants themselves). I note 
however that one of the functions of an encyclopaedia is selection of 
encyclopaedic information, and this is why we have these perennial 
battles about notability).


2a. A good travel guide caters to specific audience - e.g. backpackers, 
retirees, or adventure travelers. If it attempts catering to all 
travellers at the same time, it becomes useless.


3. My personal impression (of somebody who has an advanced knowledge of 
a subject) is that Wikitravel is just a very poor travel guide. For 
standard places like Paris it can not currently beat any of the major 
travel series. For non-standard places, it contains nothing. May be this 
is fixable, I do not know. However, the real reason I never contributed 
to Wikitravel are ads.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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[Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[James Heilman]

@ MZMcBride I just assumed that most would see travel content as
educational in nature but have added this clarification to the proposal in
in question. If most accept that travel is educational in nature, resources
that help with travel would thus be educational resources and within the
scope of the Wikimedia Foundation.

@ John Vandenberg A recent copy of Wikitravel have been put aside and it is
ready to be adding into a mediawiki site.

-- 
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MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[MZMcBride]

James Heilman wrote:
> The Spanish Wikipedia, if I remember correctly, threatened to split off in
> 2004 due to Wikipedia having no solid non profit foundation.

I don't think you remember correctly at all. The Spanish Wikipedia's history
is covered here: . In 2002,
responding to a proposal to add advertising to the site, members of the
Spanish Wikipedia created a fork called Enciclopedia Libre. (The proposal
was ultimately rejected, of course.) I believe this is what you're referring
to.

> If we within the Wikimedia Movement want to see this content improved we
> should welcome them into the WMF. We have 20 editors supporting this proposal
> as of April 10th, 2012. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Travel_Guide

I think it's fair to note that a large percentage of those 20 editors are
Wikitravel administrators. The question is not whether members of Wikitravel
want to be incorporated into a Wikimedia Foundation wiki, the question is
whether a travel guide wiki fits within Wikimedia's scope. I'm not sure it
does. The page on Meta-Wiki seems to lack any explanation of the educational
value of such a project. It instead derails advertising and makes a few
generic statements that would be true of any project addition ("increase the
number of Wikimedians," etc.).

If you're serious about seeing it become the next Wikimedia sister project,
I'd focus on making a better case for how it falls within Wikimedia's scope.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[John Vandenberg]

I agree that travel content is within the scope.  In addition to the
content itself, which helps other people, the process of writing and
communicating travel information is educational for the writer.

There was a session about WikiTravel on at RCC2011 Canberra, where the
need to change host was discussed, and forking generally was
discussed.

https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/University_of_Canberra/RCC2011/All_about_Wikitravel

The wikiteam dumps of wikitravel are a bit old now; is someone working
on making fresh dumps publicly available?
https://code.google.com/p/wikiteam/downloads/list?can=2&q=wikitravel
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/wikiteam-discuss/0gSFlnxeKOo/discussion

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 9:17 AM, James Heilman  wrote:
> First of all yes travel content is educational. Some of the best education
> I have received in fact. Travel content however is in a form distinct from
> an encyclopedia and thus needs its own project.
>
> The editors from Wikitravel already have the content in a form that can be
> easily uploaded into a wiki. They plan to start their own Wiki if we are
> not interested.
>
> @Juergen Yes discussions are occurring with WikiVoyage and it is hoped that
> they would be interested in joining a combined Wikimedia project as
> described. There is reasons why the English community does not simply
> rejoin the German community at WikiVoyage.  It is my hope that moving to
> the WMF will allow the rejoining of these two communities on equal footing.
>
> --
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Andrew Gray]

On 10 April 2012 12:59, Thomas Morton  wrote:

> I use it a lot and many of the pages ramble excessively and complain about
> issues without any form of sourcing. In fact most articles lack even the
> most basic sourcing; if they came onboard I don't think that state of
> affairs could continue, and I'd be cautious of importing content without
> any form of review.
>
> The other issue is one of advertising and promotion, which is rather
> delicate. Many pages have recommendations for accommodation, restaurants,
> bars, etc. that read either as promotional, or very subjective. They tend
> to be quite out of date too.

To be fair, we could make exactly the same criticisms were we debating
about whether or not WMF should adopt a certain high-profile
encyclopedia project - lots of rambling, badly written, unsourced
pages; lots of blatantly promotional (or excessively negative)
content... ;-)

I really don't see any real problem with WMF running a "travel guide"
site; it fills a niche not adequately covered by our other projects,
and while it does involve a different style of writing, it's basically
still documenting the world, as factually as possible, for the benefit
of readers. The main reason we haven't ever started one ourselves, I
suspect, is just that Wikitravel has been there all along!

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Sarah Stierch]

I've been somewhat following this conversation - and this is totally 
trivial, but, I love WikiTravel, use it whenever I do travel, and 
actually, it was the first wiki I wrote content for (I used to only do 
gnomish things on Wikipedia).[1]


I still, to this very day, remember the first time I was given a 
compliment for my work on WikiTravel, by the co-founder, and that was 
before they had adverts. It's one of the examples I frequently use about 
how important praise on-wiki is. (It helped me stick around!)


I'd frankly be all about WikiTravel, and would really be interested in 
seeing it be a part of the Wikimedia community, especially so I can 
contribute to it ad free ;) . I know it'd open us up to a whole new can 
of COI worms, I think it'd make for a really valuable resource and give 
paid services and Frommer's/Lonely Planets a run for their "money."


-Sarah

[1] http://wikitravel.org/en/User:Missvain



On 4/10/12 1:27 PM, James Heilman wrote:

Yes WikiTravel has some poorly sourced pages that ramble on. However so
does Wikipedia. The solution is to increase the size of the community and
quality will increase with time. We did not always have
strike referencing guidelines. To get this project to grow we need to get
it based in an environment where it can grow.

The Spanish Wikipedia, if I remember correctly, threatened to split off in
2004 due to Wikipedia having no solid non profit foundation. Those are WT
have the same concerns. They do not want all their volunteers efforts going
to the bottom line of a for profit (Internet Brands). And would anyone
blame them. If we within the Wikimedia Movement want to see this content
improved we should welcome them into the WMF. We have 20 editors supporting
this proposal as of April 10th, 2012.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Travel_Guide




--
*Sarah Stierch*
*/Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellow/*
>>Support the sharing of free knowledge around the world: donate today 
<<

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[Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[James Heilman]

Yes WikiTravel has some poorly sourced pages that ramble on. However so
does Wikipedia. The solution is to increase the size of the community and
quality will increase with time. We did not always have
strike referencing guidelines. To get this project to grow we need to get
it based in an environment where it can grow.

The Spanish Wikipedia, if I remember correctly, threatened to split off in
2004 due to Wikipedia having no solid non profit foundation. Those are WT
have the same concerns. They do not want all their volunteers efforts going
to the bottom line of a for profit (Internet Brands). And would anyone
blame them. If we within the Wikimedia Movement want to see this content
improved we should welcome them into the WMF. We have 20 editors supporting
this proposal as of April 10th, 2012.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Travel_Guide

-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Thomas Morton]

On 10 April 2012 12:48, Peter Coombe  wrote:

> On 10 April 2012 05:32, Strainu  wrote:
> > În data de 9 aprilie 2012, 21:17, Ziko van Dijk
> >  a scris:
> >> One might get problems with policies such as NOR and NPOV. I suppose
> >> that they should be applied on Wiki Travel Guide, as on Wikipedia,
> >> Wikibooks and other Wikimedia sites.
> >
> > If using these as they are now would be a precondition for hosting the
> > project at wikimedia, then Wikivoyage is better of on its own. I'm not
> > that familiar with the rules of these different sites, but the
> > articles did not strike me as extremely neutral - but not clearly
> > partisan either. Most of them are very near that balance that makes
> > them appealing to a large public while keeping them serious.
> >
>
> No Original Research shouldn't be an issue, we already have Wikinews
> accepting original reporting.
>

It's a bit different though... on WikiNews you can objectively report
things as "OR" - with clear notes taken at the time, etc.

On WikiTravel it's not really like that; because a lot of it revolves
around the best... restaurant, bar, place to stay, way to get around,
sights to see. This is all extremely subjective and basically depends on
who is writing the page.

For example; I would probably write a very different guide to Paris as
someone else who had visited the city!


>
> Neutral Point of View might be a more delicate area. You probably
> couldn't write a travel guide using the same standards of NPOV as used
> on Wikipedia, and if you could it would most likely be very dull. As
> far as I know all the existing projects follow some form of NPOV, but
> it isn't actually enshrined in the Foundation's mission statement,
> vision or values.


Dullness doesn't have anything to do with NPOV; it's just poor writing.
There are featured articles on some very dull 16th century individuals that
positively pop and sizzle because the writing is excellent.

Non-neutral material *looks* exciting because it is controversial. But it's
a faux-excitment, and is of significantly less utility to the reader.

WikiTravel is AWESOME and should totally be embraced by Wikimedia. However,
I'd be cautious of embracing all of their content without some level of
filtering...

I use it a lot and many of the pages ramble excessively and complain about
issues without any form of sourcing. In fact most articles lack even the
most basic sourcing; if they came onboard I don't think that state of
affairs could continue, and I'd be cautious of importing content without
any form of review.

The other issue is one of advertising and promotion, which is rather
delicate. Many pages have recommendations for accommodation, restaurants,
bars, etc. that read either as promotional, or very subjective. They tend
to be quite out of date too.

Finding a way to integrate a database of amenities for each location
(rather than have it on the page in the prose), perhaps with
ratings/reviews, would be interesting - and solve the problem of
introducing first hand accounts without clear context.

Just some random thoughts; pitched right, Wikitravel would be a great
addition to the mix IMO.

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Peter Coombe]

On 10 April 2012 05:32, Strainu  wrote:
> În data de 9 aprilie 2012, 21:17, Ziko van Dijk
>  a scris:
>> One might get problems with policies such as NOR and NPOV. I suppose
>> that they should be applied on Wiki Travel Guide, as on Wikipedia,
>> Wikibooks and other Wikimedia sites.
>
> If using these as they are now would be a precondition for hosting the
> project at wikimedia, then Wikivoyage is better of on its own. I'm not
> that familiar with the rules of these different sites, but the
> articles did not strike me as extremely neutral - but not clearly
> partisan either. Most of them are very near that balance that makes
> them appealing to a large public while keeping them serious.
>

No Original Research shouldn't be an issue, we already have Wikinews
accepting original reporting.

Neutral Point of View might be a more delicate area. You probably
couldn't write a travel guide using the same standards of NPOV as used
on Wikipedia, and if you could it would most likely be very dull. As
far as I know all the existing projects follow some form of NPOV, but
it isn't actually enshrined in the Foundation's mission statement,
vision or values.

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vision
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values

Peter

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[Strainu]

În data de 9 aprilie 2012, 21:17, Ziko van Dijk
 a scris:
> One might get problems with policies such as NOR and NPOV. I suppose
> that they should be applied on Wiki Travel Guide, as on Wikipedia,
> Wikibooks and other Wikimedia sites.

If using these as they are now would be a precondition for hosting the
project at wikimedia, then Wikivoyage is better of on its own. I'm not
that familiar with the rules of these different sites, but the
articles did not strike me as extremely neutral - but not clearly
partisan either. Most of them are very near that balance that makes
them appealing to a large public while keeping them serious.

În data de 9 aprilie 2012, 20:49, Juergen Fenn
 a scris:
>
> As I've just written on the talk page there: Frankly speaking, I don't
> think we need another wiki on travelling as there already is
> Wikivoyage.

Splitting is indeed a bad idea.

În data de 9 aprilie 2012, 20:49, Juergen Fenn
 a scris:
> German editors of Wikivoyage most probably will not change to a WMF project.

În data de 10 aprilie 2012, 02:17, James Heilman  a scris:
>  There is reasons why the English community does not simply
> rejoin the German community at WikiVoyage.

Splitting on language barriers is even worse :) I understand you guys
already have a German NGO, which, as I've come to know, offers many
advantages for European users over an American one. But the truth is
the WMF has an extensive expertise on running MediaWiki-based websites
and you would always have the latest version of the software and
acceptable support from the developers. Plus, the single sign-on would
also help with participation.

Perhaps your contributors would be interested in some kind of
collaboration scheme, were the WMF would host the site? The idea has
been brought up on this list some time ago for Citizendium, why could
we not apply it for other projects? I think this would also fit with
the WMF's intention to broaden the types of affiliation it allows.

Regards,
  Strainu

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[Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[James Heilman]

Typically policies and guidelines are decided by the community of editors
that make up a specific site. With respect to referencing and research
these will be somewhat different from an encyclopdia which is why
attempting to combine this content into Wikipedia is not really
appropriate. Also travel information is more in a "how to tone" rather than
an encyclopedic one.

-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
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[Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide

[James Heilman]

First of all yes travel content is educational. Some of the best education
I have received in fact. Travel content however is in a form distinct from
an encyclopedia and thus needs its own project.

The editors from Wikitravel already have the content in a form that can be
easily uploaded into a wiki. They plan to start their own Wiki if we are
not interested.

@Juergen Yes discussions are occurring with WikiVoyage and it is hoped that
they would be interested in joining a combined Wikimedia project as
described. There is reasons why the English community does not simply
rejoin the German community at WikiVoyage.  It is my hope that moving to
the WMF will allow the rejoining of these two communities on equal footing.

-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
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