Hi all, I'm a long-standing editor/admin/etc. at Wikitravel, though I've been less active in recent years, mainly due to work and family.
I have, however, been participating in discussions among Wikitravel admins about our dissatisfaction with our current hosting provider, and what we're going to do about it. As you know, one of the ideas which has been floated is to attempt to join WMF. One of the parties to that discussion started a new Wiki proposal on Meta, and a discussion here. I'm glad to have the chance to jump in before the discussion gets very far along. There are some important points to be made: First, NPOV would probably be a deal-breaker. The travel wiki community (usually working at Wikitravel) have long used Traveller's Point of View. This point of view is not neutral at all, but favours the traveller. Hoteliers, restaurateurs, etc. have different points of view, but for us it's the traveller's that counts. We're under the impression that there are other Wikimedia foundation projects which don't use NPOV, and so those of us favouring approaching WMF have been able to argue that we wouldn't be forced to use it. If that's wrong then we should probably just give up this line of exploration and go find another solution. I personally don't think that a creative interpretation of the concept of NPOV to make it look like TPOV would do, but of course I'm just one voice. Still there are others who feel even more strongly on this point. Second, this is a fairly old and established community, with its own habits, mores, etc. As with other communities it makes some sense perhaps to learn about ours a bit before visiting. I think some of our fellow travellers are a bit concerned about being swamped by the shear size of the communities involved in other WMF projects (Wikipedia) and rightly so. They worry that the travel guide community runs a chance of quickly losing editorial control, and that this will lead not to the desired consolidation, but rather more unhealthy splintering in the collaborative travel guide space. All in all I think there's a pretty good chance that a WMF travel guide Wiki would stand a good chance at attracting a large part of the community under the right circumstances. But - it's important to recognize that that community already exists if one wants to attract it. thanks! -mark _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
