Wikivoyage/Lounge/Archive/2013-08

Phrasebooks

I've noticed that on the phrasebooks there are differences between the various wikis that should be harmonized.

At the first glance this group of articles have been placed under different namespaces (NS:x)

• The various phrasebooks have been placed:
  • by it:voy under Tematica NS
  • by de:voy under Thema NS
  • all the other in the main namespace (NS:0)
• The phrasebooks list has been placed:
  • by it:voy under Tematica NS
  • by de:voy under Thema NS
  • by fr:voy, ru:voy, sv:voy under Wikivoyage NS
  • by ro:voy under Project NS
  • all the other in the main namespace (NS:0)

I think that we should select a common way to store them.

Possible solution are the followings:

1. main namespce
2. Tematica/Thema .... translated in all the languages
3. Phrasebook/Frasario .... translated in all the languages
4. Other proposals .... to be translated for each language
5. Wikivoyage .... the same for each language
6. Other proposals .... with a common name for all the languages

At the moment my favour goes to #3 because:

• I see it as a parallel project inside wikivoyage (I don't like to mix "place articles" with "support articles");
• each wiki felt naturally the need to specify this words in the title of each article of this group;
• furthermore it's the same choice made by Lonely Planet, so maybe it's not so extravagant :-)

However, I'd like to listen to your opinions.

Please share your ideas. --Andyrom75 (talk) 16:30, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

In the german Wikivoyage only places are stored in the main namespace. I don't think that the community will change this. The "Thema" namespace is for all other content for travellers. The phrasebooks are no Voy-Internals, so the should in my oppinion not in the Project namespace. I don't think we need an extra namespace for only a couple of pages. Wy do we need to move the pages in all wikis to the same namespace? --Pyfisch (talk) 18:06, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I am somehow confused. Do all Wikivoyages use the same set of namespaces, to start with?--Ymblanter (talk) 20:23, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

It would seem that they do not. As in en: we have no namespace equivalent to Thema/Thematica and have all articles intended for public view in main space. Remember that de: and it: went their own way for several years, and developed differently. I think that some compelling reason would be necessary to get consensus for a change either way. Does a compelling reason exist? I think en: would argue that we have not noticed one yet. If we were to change, Phrasebook or is to me the obvious choice, with translated equivalents with the same namespace identity number in the other languages.· · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 20:54, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

en:voy's community would most likely oppose moving it to any other namespace except the mainspace. We have decided that all content articles, regardless of whether they are destinations, travel topics, lists of star articles, or phrasebooks, belong in the mainspace. We don't have separate namespaces for different types of reader content, and I don't think we should. JamesA (talk) 03:52, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Honestly speaking I was expecting that de:voy would oppose to put out the phrasebooks out the Thema NS like I was expecting that en:voy would oppose to put them out the main NS. That's another reason (that I haven't written above :-)) to use a third NS.

If all the time we all tend to stuck in our own position we hardly could find a common approach, furthermore in this case we are talking of just renaming the article's titles. Let's reflect on this point.

Personally I'm open to any common solution including those that are different from the current it:voy asset, in fact as a sign of good will I've proposed a different one. I suggest to not loose any chance that we have to increase the sense of an interlingual community. --Andyrom75 (talk) 06:40, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Other than possibly getting a common solution, is there any practical advantage to a change? We should remain open to a suggestion which has a practical advantage. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:31, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Change for change's sake is pointless. Why should every language version operate exactly the same? I even question why every language should use the same pagebanner imagery. We are different, and we should embrace those differences, not seek to minimize them. LtPowers (talk) 13:35, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Homogeneity in general is always a good thing and putting this in doubt it's not a great step ahead :-). However, organized contents can be better managed and utilized. Let's take for example the help pages of wikipedia. All of them are stored under help/aiuto/Hilfe/etc... NS for the same reason. To reach the in the different wikis it doesn't oblige to know the translated word because through the NS magic word the can easily reached. Usually in a NS are collected pages with omogeneous content that can be treated in a similar way so just to mention an example it's easier to apply scripts or run a bot in the whole NS instead of filter all the time those pages. Through NS magic word it's also easy to apply the same code in for all language. Now we are talking only of phrasebook but the same way of thinking can be applied to anything.

To answer to Lt, omogeneous doesn't mean identical. So, remaining in your pagebanner example, it could be good that if a wiki use the pagebanner, they should use the same set of templates with the same standard on the image, otherwise there's a huge waste of effort in reinventing the wheel. Then each wiki is free to put the image that they likes more in their own pages. A good cooperation between the wikis IMO is when we create a banner for a page, this banner can be added with a very low effort in each page those wikis that has implemented the pagebanner system and that do not have any banner in that page, because for sure it's an enrichment. --Andyrom75 (talk) 13:45, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

In de:voy we had the decision: all articles with coordinates belong to the main namespace, the others to the "theme" namespace. So the phrasebooks are "theme" topics. -- Balou46 (talk) 14:04, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

IMO it was a wise decision in the direction of classifying the contents. --Andyrom75 (talk) 12:29, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Let me recap the background information shared until now.

In the past has been decided within: en:voy to put everything in the NS:0 and de:voy to split the sites from the topics.

I assume that it:voy has followed de:voy because it was the only existing project and I assume that the other wikis has followed en:voy because English is wide understandable.

Now, I think that we should think on what we could do. --Andyrom75 (talk) 13:23, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

It looks like neither de nor en are likely to change their decision, which means there is nothing which can be done about it. On the other hand, I am not sure that NS is such an important issue (contrary to map compatibility, for instance), and they are interlinked anyway (next week, all interwiki links will go to WikiData).--Ymblanter (talk) 14:40, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

NS it's just one of the several difference arisen from a sealed compartment approach that it 's easy to mitigate, the difficulty consist only in the will of people the looks just in their own "garden" instead of looking "the whole panorama" :-)

Region division unfortunately it will be a mess because there are a lot of discrepancy and to mitigate it, it will took months of works. I've started to work on it:voy in January and I haven't finished yet.

My point is: if we are not able to find an agreement on easy things, how can we manage the more complex one?

--Andyrom75 (talk) 16:05, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it might be easier to agree on the regional division than on the NS. For example, at some point I discovered that the regional division in wikivoyage:ru:Poland is different from en.wv . I took it to the village pump and re-designed the division. We do not have an ambition to construct our own division of the US, for example, but we spend there a lot of time discussing divisions of the Russian and Kazakh regions, and I hope colleagues from other Wikivoyages would accept that we know these regions better than they do, and just take our division.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I would love to belive you :-) --Andyrom75 (talk) 18:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hopefully not hijacking this thread too much, but I also usually try to defer to language versions' choice of regions in which that language is most commonly used. The Russian version is one of the best organized and run (IMO), so it would seem a little crazy for en.voy to try and come up with its own, different structures for districted Russian cities and regions. The Spanish version, on the other hand, seems to have abandoned some/most of the precepts of Wikivoyage's traditional geographical hierarchy, so I don't know if it's possible to look to them for help with regions of Spanish speaking countries :( It's still possible to use the same multilingual file for regions maps, though, since we can simply use multiple sublayers of the regions layer.

By the way, I was worried by Ymblanter's comment that ru.voy didn't like my Kazakhstan regions, but am happy to see that they were approved by our Russian speakers ;) --Peter ^Talk 20:00, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Peter no problem for the digression but at least leave your opinion on the topic :-) --Andyrom75 (talk) 20:50, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Good point ;) I guess I don't see the tangible advantage to harmonizing our placement of phrasebooks in namespaces. How would using a consistent namespace help with interlingual cooperation? --Peter ^Talk 03:43, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Above I've answered to LtPowers for the same question. NSs are used to group pages with the same kind of content, and these pages usually has a similar structure, so cleaning/changes bot activity could be performed just addressing all the NSs pages instead of looking for them page by page. I've started the thread talking of the phrasebook, but this can be applied to other group of pages like help or others. --Andyrom75 (talk) 12:15, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Gotcha, the advantage is for crosswiki bots. Could you give an example of what sorts of bots would be useful for phrasebooks in particular? --Peter ^Talk 19:10, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I haven't yet thougth anything in particular, but just to brainstorming the first thing that comes out into my mind I would say that with the same structure of sections and words/sentences inside each section, it would be possible to provide the translation for each language. If the structure would be different, although it would be still theoretically feasible, the complexity would be exponentially higher. --Andyrom75 (talk) 20:16, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Keep on brainstorming in the opposite direction. Stocking all the pages in the same NS, the minor effect is just to slowdown the bot activity (as far is pure automatic.... otherwise, in sami-automatic scenario it's a pain...), but the major issue is that increase the chance to make a mess because the possibility to find a "false positive" it's higher. --Andyrom75 (talk) 13:42, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I think you're overestimating the extent of namespace separation on most wikis. Take Wikipedia, for instance. You correctly noted that help pages are in the Help namespace. But Help pages are not content. All encyclopedia articles are in the main namespace, as they should be. Likewise, on en.voy, all guides are in the main namespace, as they should be. Wikipedia does not segregate biographies into a Bio: namespace, geographic articles into a Geo: namespace, and science topics into a Science: namespace. So I don't understand why Wikivoyage would segregate phrasebooks (/travel topics/itineraries) from destination guides. They're all part of the main content of the site; the other namespaces are all for meta content that non-editors don't need to see. If you need a more specific reason, look at search functionality; if we have additional content namespaces beyond (Main), then users have to pay more attention to what namespaces they're searching. That adds complexity, and we're trying to be simple.
That said, I'm not interested in trying to get de: and it: to conform to en:. If they're happy with having phrasebooks in a separate namespace, it's no big deal to me. I think heterogeneity is fine. But I also don't think it's the right solution for en:. LtPowers (talk) 20:00, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

As per most of the above comments I think it's clear that there is no real interest to have a common interlingual approach. Anyway, in order to close officially this thread and to avoid misunderstanding, it's important to express an opinion by vote. --Andyrom75 (talk) 23:17, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I warn everybody here: Don't vote! We are facing a case of bias. I'm sure of that. I have no fear of saying that this guy acts in Italian Wikivoyage without seeking for community consensus. His abuses forced me to move to French Wikivoyage. There I will find what I absolutely need: Respect! --Gobbler (talk) 03:59, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can see you're definitely biased towards Andyrom75 and you should ofc rember that bunch of weird extensions you and another user activated on it.voy with a 1 day/2 votes-pool over there. I must suggest to go on dealing with the topic rather than with the guy who did propose it. --Vituzzu (talk) 23:18, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

A vote here is kind of pointless--language versions have independence and can therefore ignore it. The language versions I work on don't even allow voting. --Peter ^Talk 07:07, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Peter, so how can be reached an agreement without voting? (generally speaking, not in this case in particular) --Andyrom75 (talk) 19:35, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

On en.voy we just use voy:Wikivoyage:Consensus. We discuss, try to find a good solution, and if everyone or almost everyone thinks it's an OK solution, then we do it. Sometimes we get deadlocked, and then we start productive work on something else that we can agree on. It works surprisingly well--possibly because it forces us to work cooperatively, not polemically. In the case of this issue, I don't think there's much support for a change of namespace for phrasebooks on en.voy, so we'll have to work on something else ;) --Peter ^Talk 05:31, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

That's ok, but my doubt is, how you measure the concept of "almost everyone"? Chatting a part, a vote summarize the various positions, no? At the end it's what is currently in place for the vfd in en:voy, isn't it?

Just for the sake of clarity, from my point of view, in this specific case, the vote is needed just to formalize the closure of this proposal, otherwise it seems an open point. --Andyrom75 (talk) 16:23, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

We just look at the arguments presented, and whether anyone disagreed with the solution that most people seem to want. It really is as simple as that. I don't see any reason with leaving this an open point. If we want to revisit the idea later, we can. --Peter ^Talk 18:38, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Here a little excerpt from our policies about voting "Wikivoyage does not use voting because, unlike consensus, it does not require that contributors present their arguments and carefully respond to each others' arguments. In short, it depresses the kind of careful analysis and discussion that ensures that changes are made thoughtfully. Moreover, voting is complicated by the realities of the semi-anonymous online world; it is often not possible to ensure the one-person one-vote model of majoritarian democracy." And here the Italian text. --Gobbler (talk) 23:08, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can see no Italian read the rule. So, just for the challenge, I really do suggest that they change the text and allow voting in it/wv. It's a matter of few minutes there. No discussion, no consensus needed, isn't it? --Gobbler (talk) 00:05, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

So Peter, if I got your point is: if there is zero objections, a proposal is approved, otherwise everything would remain as it is, right? --Andyrom75 (talk) 06:37, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect. Consensus means a strong agreement, not unanimity. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:21, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. There was no time to follow the whole discussion. Just one point. We have the thematic namespace on de: amnd en: All travel related articles that do not represent a geographical destination go to the Topic namespace (itineraries, phrasebooks, religion, sports). One of the reason was our location database - the kind of Wikidata we had before. So.. all extensions and bots with geographical features (hierarchy, coordinates, map tools ... whatever) worked in the main namespace and did not affect any other articles. No bot can complain about a missing coordinate in a phrasebook. This fact cvan be useful in the future as well. We wont give it up on de: -- DerFussi 06:50, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Technically speaking it makes a lot of sense. Question, you said "we HAD before". Does that tool still work or it has been dismissed? --Andyrom75 (talk) 07:04, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

This special tool has been dismissed. We have a new map tool and more will come. Besides we have some special guidelines and manuals of style related to our thematic namespace. And not to forget.... We have a news and a election namespace as well :) -- DerFussi 05:21, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Uniform interlingual NS

 Support --Andyrom75 (talk) 23:17, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Listings/VCards to Wikidata

I think it's time to collaborate with Wikidata. If started a request for comments to create a listing/vcard structure on Wikidata. At the end all listings should go to Wikidata to have them available on all language versions here. -- DerFussi 05:33, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Uploads, non-free content, and EDPs

Hello Wikivoyagers - just a little policy request for you. Could people from all Wikivoyage editions please check out Non-free_content#Wikivoyage, the global index of Exemption Doctrine Policy links, and update it if the entry for your project is wrong?

Can I also suggest that Wikivoyage editions edit their MediaWiki:Uploadtext page to mention whether non-free content is allowed or not. (Particularly Russian Wikivoyage needs to do this.) That way, uploaders can be clearer about whether their upload will be accepted.

Thanks, This, that and the other (talk) 10:28, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Russian is correct in the table. I will discuss the Mediawiki edits in the project.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:57, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Done for voy:ru--Ymblanter (talk) 05:50, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Done (& discussed) for it:voy as well. --Andyrom75 (talk) 13:52, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Interwiki links to incubator versions

I see that the Wikivoyage article on Japan is able to link to the Chinese Wikivoyage article in Wikimedia Incubator.

Can someone also help enable the English Wikipedia articles to link to Wikipedia test editions in Wikimedia Incubator? --DaveZ122 (talk) 09:13, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

(Same question answered here). --MF-W 23:20, 30 August 2013 (UTC)