Wikivoyage/Lounge/Archive/2012-11

Start a new language version

What needs to happen to get other language versions up? Our main page currently lists seven, while the sidbar on the WT en main page gives:

   ar: الصفحة الرئيسية
   ca: Pàgina principal
   de: Hauptseite
   eo: Ĉefpaĝo
   es: Portada
   fi: Etusivu
   fr: Accueil
   he: עמוד ראשי
   hi: मुखपृष्ठ
   hu: Kezdőlap
   it: Pagina principale
   ja: メインページ
   ko: 대문
   nl: Hoofdpagina
   pl: Strona główna
   pt: Página principal
   ro: Portal
   ru: Заглавная страница
   sv: Huvudsida
   zh: 首页

I saw discussion somewhere of problems bringing up the Portuguese version. What of the rest? Pashley (talk) 11:51, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

You have to import the XML dumps into Wikimedia Incubator to start a new language version. Please see voy:de:Wikivoyage:Lounge#Wikivoyage_im_Incubator.--Aschmidt (talk) 15:44, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Good start!

Hello, This place looks nice. I like the picture. That's a good start! Yann (talk) 12:06, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! It's the traditional picture of Wikivoyage Lounges. On the continent, we prefer the Lounge to the Pub. ;) --Aschmidt (talk) 15:44, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Update on Internet Brands v. Holliday

Cf. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/11/19/update-on-internet-brands-v-holliday/ --Aschmidt (talk) 08:25, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

See also: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/11/28/update-to-internet-brands-travel-site-lawsuit/ --Aschmidt (talk) 22:17, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikivoyage in French

They're a problem with the linking to wikipedia article in french wikivoyage. The template WikiPedia:article always link us to the english wikipedia. I've made some changes and i must use WikiPedia:fr:article to go the french side. This will become problematic as most user will not use the :fr to go to the french version. I've not seen how i can change that in french:wikivoyage and i'm not a very good at using template and programmation. How can we fix this thing. Maybe colleague from the nederland or sverige wikivoyage have answer to this problem. , On a more content side i will say that things are starting slowly. Theres a lack of old participants that know the guideline and policies of wikivoyage. So the content part is starting slowly. Not a lot of participant, much less than the english version. But already they are some interesting addition in article. Some wikipedians from the french wikipedia come by and some old wikitravellers also. I will stay in touch here. Excuse my english, hope you're able to understand me. -- ChristianT (talk) 12:01, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

The w: and wikipedia: links are interwiki prefixes, not templates (modèle). As the list of these prefixes is shared between all Wikimedia projects, it is not possible to fix this by editing a template. The only likely solution is to use some sort of robot script that replaces [[WikiPedia: in every article with something else, such as [[wikipedia:fr: or a template link. K7L (talk) 12:23, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, [[:wikipedia:fr:xxx]] for the time being seems to be the only option.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:32, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

voy:fr:w: points at French Wikipedia whereas voy:fr:wikipedia: points at English Wikipedia. Can't you just use "w:" instead of "wikipedia:" everywhere? --Stefan2 (talk) 16:52, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

wikipedia: links are moved to the sidebar on article pages, w: links are not - this isn't the same as the convention on Wikipédia itself (where articles have a == Liens externes == section for external links) but is the Wikivoyage convention. That creates a problem for all of our existing non-English articles with sidebar links to what should have been the same-language Wikipedia, but instead is w:en: K7L (talk) 16:56, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

FYI: We have a new template voy:de:Vorlage:Wikipedia in Germany WV for linking to Wikipedia in the sidebar, and we use the w: prefix in other places.

I've already realised that French WV is starting very slowly, and I can say for German WV that we are rather busy at the moment. However, I expect the project to take another half year or so at least to fix all the redlinks and to adapt to Wikimedia standards.--Aschmidt (talk) 17:14, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

BTW, Wikivoyage does not seem to be that popular amongst French-speaking Wikipedians: fr:Wikipédia:Le Bistro/11 novembre 2012#Wikivoyage --Aschmidt (talk) 00:29, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

That doesn't surprise me; there are 3000 {{wikitravel}} templates (and its aliases) on en: pages awaiting robotic disposal (template was voted for deletion as Wikivoyage has the same content locally), on fr: it was 30 pages instead of 3000 and they were all replaced with {{autres projets}} manually. Maybe, because fr: is a smaller community, they're more likely to focus on just one project (Wikipédia) instead of dividing their efforts among multiple siblings? K7L (talk) 01:51, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Official launch

When should we launch officially? Have been looking around WV and it appears that about half the images are working. What percentage should be fixed before we begin advertising the site? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:41, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

The German one looks quite good. Features and all templates are working, als well as maps and coordinates and all infoboxes. Mostly the interwiki stuff is to be done and adapting some templates to WMF standards. We would say: Around Christmas. What do you think? -- DerFussi 12:22, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Russian Wikivoyage has most of the images redlinks. If the images are done before Christmas, I guess we should be fine, the rest of the work will probably be completed by then.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:06, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

What is the best time to launch with respect to a media campaign? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:44, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Let me think. Ymblanter's message is showing a problem to us. It seems, the transfer bots focus on the main uploaders first. So the images of en: and de: will be uploaded first. OK other language version use these images as well. But the other language versions will be fall behind. Sounds a bit uncomfortable to me. But have no idea, what to do. Just checking the situation again in two weeks? Would love to see all language version starting here with the same level. Have prepared a bottle of a nice drink here... Any chance to help? Should we upload images from the smaller language version by hand? Is help needed with templates interwiki or something? -- DerFussi 21:55, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Please do not start early. We should have more redlinks fixed in de.voy before leaving beta officially.--Aschmidt (talk) 22:19, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

We are definitely unable to start before Christmas. Since holidays may be bad time for any media campaign, we should think about first part of January or any later date, which is suitable for advertising the site. --Atsirlin (talk) 22:44, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

experience suggests thats its best not to think in terms of media campaigns. The reality is that due to copyright issues there are going to be quite a lot of redlinks around whatever. Best approach is probably to work out what the most viewed pages are and fix the redlinks on those. Currently you are tending towards letting perfect be the enemy of good and that never ends well in the context of wikis.Geni (talk) 08:21, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

We (on Russian Wikivoyage) can get rid of redlinks in a couple of days just replacing them with valid images from Commons. I just do not think this is fair to contributors who previously spent time to search for appropriate images, sometimes to upload them, and now they would suddenly find that their images are gone from the WV pages just because we screwed up the process and wanted to open soon.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:46, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

@Aschmidt: Just suggested a recheck intwoo weeks. Not leaving beta. We should do it just to get informed about the situation on all the language versions. -- DerFussi 13:39, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I'd suspect that the timing of media attention to the case isn't something which can be tightly controlled. It's going to be on the radar at whatever moment the last of the IB litigation (and any counterclaims) reaches final judgement... whether we are ready with images for launch at that time or not. K7L (talk) 14:26, 29 November 2012 (UTC)