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Policy structure in easily editable format

Travel Wiki Policy Hierarchy

Guiding principles

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  • Nutshell:
  • Note: What all goes here?
  • Nutshell: What this travel guide is all about.
  • Related pages: [[:en:Wikivoyage:Where_you_can_stick_it|Where you can stick it]
    [[:en:Wikivoyage:What_is_an_article?|What is an article?]
  • Nutshell: Our work should be guided by what works best from the traveller's perspective.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Decisions are made by achieving consensus. Consensus is only possible if there is communication. The community has a right to be informed of the possibility of a change that may affect them.
  • Related pages: Requests for comment
    Traveller's pub
    Site notice
  • Nutshell: Don't worry about being perfect or making mistakes. If something needs to be done, do it. Jump in and make useful edits to articles.
  • Related pages:

Core content policies

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  • Nutshell:
  • Note: What all goes here?
  • Note: These Core content policies should refer/link to Writing Style and vice-versa
  • Nutshell: Articles should not present an agenda. Information must be presented in such a way that the travel guide is reliable and complete.
  • Alt: Do not advance any ideological arguments. Rather, share your knowledge and impressions to make the guide reliable, accurate and useful to the traveller.
  • Note: The travel guide is a work in progress and will never be complete. Nutshell may need rewording.
  • Nutshell: Listings should describe the establishment or attraction in clear, honest and concise terms. A business should only be listed once per destination. Edits that look like touting may be reverted.
  • Related pages: [[:en:Wikivoyage:Words_to_avoid Words to avoid]}
  • Nutshell Writing should describe the destination or attraction in a lively and concise manner. Avoid exaggerations, superlatives and vague, flowery language.
  • Related pages: Words to avoid
    Avoid negative reviews

Community policies

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  • Nutshell:
  • Note: What all goes here?

Unwanted edits

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  • Nutshell: Unwanted edits are contributions that do not agree with our policies and guidelines or Manual of Style. Any contributor may revert an unwanted edit.
  • Related pages: How to revert a page
  • Nutshell: Do not wage edit war. If involved in one, step back and use the article’s talk page to come to a consensus.
  • Note: request 3rd opinion?
[edit]
  • Nutshell External links should be kept to a minimum, and only links to primary sources should be used. There should not be an external links section in any article.
  • Related pages: Links to Open Directory
  • Note: New policy needed as there will be more than just Wikipedia to consider, though that is the most likely to be linked
  • Nutshell: Many of the articles in the Wikimedia free travel guide can benefit from links to Wikipedia articles on the same subject. A travel article focuses on the issues facing travelers for a destination, but Wikipedia articles can have deeper or broader information on a topic or attraction.
  • Related pages:Links to Wikipedia
  • Note: Page should reference "don't overlink" guideline, or perhaps "don't overlink" should be incorporated into this policy?
  • Nutshell: Be liberal with links to other Wikimedia free travel guide pages, but try to only link the first instance of an article name. These should be incorporated into the text of an article if practical, otherwise use a "See also" section at the end of the page:
  • Related pages:
  • Note: More of a how-to page than policy. There is some guideline info at the bottom that should be moved to the top.
  • Nutshell: The MediaWiki software we use has features for making links between articles that cover the same topic in different languages. These are called inter-language links. Articles should be linked to the same topic in other languages within the Wikimedia free travel guides when possible.
  • Related pages:

Specific community policies

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  • Nutshell: Articles and images can be deleted if certain criteria are met. If you feel an article or image should be deleted, nominate it for deletion. Some items, such as spam or blatant copyright violations, can be speedy deleted.
  • Related pages: Votes for deletion
    Votes for undeletion
    How to delete a page
  • Nutshell: Administrators may protect a page if certain criteria are met. It is preferred, however, if abusive edits are counteracted without protecting a page.
  • Alt: Administrators may protect a page when necessary, but it is preferable that abusive edits are effectively counteracted without protecting a page.
  • Related pages: How to handle unwanted edits
    Edit war
    User ban nominations
  • Nutshell: Images must be compatible with our copyleft licence. The image page must contain a summary with the appropriate attribution information and licence information. Photos should not contain people unless it is a public space and the people are peripheral to the picture content.
  • Related pages: How to add an image
    Image resources
    Images in articles
  • Note: possible VFD or Merge - seems to be people in photos, which is already covered in the Image policy
  • Nutshell: In the context of the travel guide, privacy rights are mainly concerned with images of people. If you don't understand privacy rights, don't upload photographs with recognisable people in them.
  • Related pages: Image policy
  • Nutshell: The creation of sockpuppets, i.e., multiple accounts per user, is discouraged because it obfuscates the identity of the contributor in contradiction with the general wiki principles of openness and transparency. Nonetheless, the travel guide does not enforce any rules regarding the creation of sockpuppets, opting instead to tolerate and ignore them. Since majority-rule voting is not employed on the travel guide, sockpuppets do not present much difficulty to site processes.
  • Note: Are admins required to declare alternative accounts?
  • Related pages: -
  • Note: Is there a policy/help page for this?
  • Nutshell:
  • Related pages: Consensus

Roles within the community

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  • Nutshell: Wikitravel has a hierarchy of people involved in the community, with varying levels of importance in the project. People lower on the hierarchy are expected to serve those above them, and make life easier for them.
  • Note: Admins not mentioned - should probably be added as #4
  • Related pages:
  • Unregistered users
  • Nutshell: Anyone who reads or edits without logging on is an unregistered user and is identified only by the IP address in use at the time.
  • Registered users
  • Nutshell: Anyone who logs on with a user name and password is a registered user and is identified by their user name and any further information they choose to publish on their user page. A registered user is not associated with an IP address.
  • Nutshell: Administrators are registered users who have shown a good appreciation of the policies and guidelines and made significant contributions, have been nominated by the community and have been granted some additional functions. They are the plumbers and janitors of the travel guide and perform mostly mundane tasks, but also those few tasks which could do permanent damage if done wrongly.
  • Related pages: Administrator nominations
    Administrator's handbook
    Non-administrator tasks
  • Nutshell: Academics and professionals on all subjects, and travel and tourist information professionals, are welcome for the detailed and in depth knowledge of destinations and subjects that they can bring and are expected to comply with our policies like any other contributor.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Docents are registered users who know a lot about a particular destination or topic and have volunteered their time and knowledge to help travellers who have questions about that destination or topic.
  • Related pages: What is a docent?

Cooperating with other websites

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  • all of the various "cooperating with..." pages

Infrastructure and software

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  • Technical infrastructure policy
  • Nutshell:
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Automated scripts that modify this project's pages and images must comply with the script policy and be approved.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: The software we use, MediaWiki, has a feature to include the contents of one article into another automatically. This is called transclusion or templating, although it has nothing to do with our article templates. Templates should be used for editorial markup and metadata.
  • Related pages: Help on Templates at Wikimedia
    Template index
    en:Wikivoyage:Article_templates Article templates - note: Article templates aren't Mediawiki templates, so I don't think they're a related page

Recognizing contributors and articles

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  • Nutshell: One great tradition in wiki culture is the barnstar. This is a simple image of an iron star, as used for decoration on barns in the northeastern United States. Because wiki community building is often compared to barn raising -- coming together to work on a project. The barnstar is a symbol of that community-mindedness, and is an informal "award" to recognize a user's exceptional community and content work.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: This is the page where you can share the news of your completed piece of work — and invite the community to celebrate your little milestone in contributing to this project. You may also celebrate the work of another contributor here, if it is worthy of public comment or thanks, but perhaps not significant enough for a barnstar yet.
  • Related pages:
  • Destination of the Month
  • Off the Beaten Path
  • Nutshell: Good articles about relatively obscure destinations can be featured on the main page for Off the Beaten Path.
  • Related pages: Off the beaten path nominations
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Terms of use

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  • Nutshell: Cookies are not required to read or edit this project, but they are necessary to log into and use a user account.
  • Related pages: -
  • Nutshell: How your user information can and cannot be used.
  • Related pages: Privacy rights
  • Note: This has the same title as the section - one of them must be changed
  • Nutshell: The whole content of Wikivoyage is available for everybody, provided that our Copyleft license is followed. Besides this webserver we provide our content as XML dumps and an offline version for re-use.
  • Related pages: How to re-use Wikivoyage content

Licencing and redistribution

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  • Note: very little content and redundant - recommend merge with Copyleft and redirected there (concur)
  • Nutshell:
  • Related pages:
  • Note: was "Copyright details" - this page is about copyright-related issues contributors could encounter - recommend changing the name of the page so it's more clear what it is.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Non-compliant distributors should be contacted and made aware of their obligations under the licence.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: The original creator of a work can choose to dual licence it. Subsequent contributors can only dual licence the work if it was previously dual-licenced.
  • Note: Will this be necessary when we work from Commons?
  • Related pages:
  • Database dumps
  • Note: Should it be part of our guiding principles to provide database dumps?
  • Nutshell: The mediawiki software provides a XML format for data exchange between wikis. It is kept quite simple and is independend of the OS and the DB used by the wiki. In order to use XML dumps, you need a running Mediawiki installation.
  • Related pages: Wikivoyage:XML dumps
    Database dump

Organization

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  • Nutshell: Structure of the wiki is described here. Structure within an article is described in Manual of style.

Hierarchy of travel guides

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  • Nutshell: To help organize travel guide articles, they are arranged into a non-overlapping geographically hierarchy. The type of information contained within an article varies depending on where it is in the hierarchy.
  • Related pages:

Creating travel guides

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  • Nutshell:
  • Note: What all goes here?

We have four categories of article:

  • Nutshell (existing page): Generally, articles can be created for destinations where a traveller can sleep, such as geographical units in the geographical hierarchy (e.g., countries, states, cities). Attractions, companies and transports systems generally do not have articles unless there is a compelling reason for an exception.
  • Alt (proposed change): A destination is a geographical location where the traveller stays for some time, typically over several days, uses accommodation facilities provided at the destination, eats there and engages in activities which are the purpose of the visit. The basic destination is the city, but destination types include regions, national parks, and districts of exceptionally large cities.
  • Note: Regions include continents, continental sections, countries, states, provinces etc. Cities may be split into districts if the article becomes cumbersome.
  • Related pages: How to start a new page
    How to merge two pages
  • Note:
  • Nutshell:A destination is a geographical location where the traveller stays for some time, typically over several days, uses accommodation facilities provided at the destination, eats there and engages in activities which are the purpose of the visit. Destination types include regions, cities and national parks
  • Related pages: Bodies of water
  • Nutshell: Travel topics are articles that deal with a specific topic that is too large or detailed to go in a specific travel guide destination page, or travel tips that are so general that they apply to nearly all destinations and don't need to be in each specific travel guide.
  • Note: A huge range of possibilities exist and if there is no guidance available for a proposed article, you can discuss it et the Traveller's pub.
  • Related pages: How to change or create policy
    Consensus
    Plunge forward
  • Nutshell: Phrasebooks are intended to define just enough of the language so that an English-speaking traveller can "get by" in an area where that language is spoken.
  • Related pages: List of phrasebooks
    Phrasebook expedition
  • Nutshell: We don't write destination guide articles about bodies of water. They may be referred to in other destination guides as attractions or as part of an itinerary or in a travel topic.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: A disambiguation page lists the full titles of several different articles with similar names, and allows the traveler to choose between them.
  • Related pages:

Travel Guide Content Policies

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  • Nutshell: Generally, if an attraction or business is not worth going to, leave it out. If a negative review is given, explain why the review is negative.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Real estate and rental agencies are not listed unless specific criteria are met.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Tours should only be listed if they are a value-added activity for the traveller.
  • Note: What does this mean?
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell Information relating to sex tourism is not included in our travel guides. Information relating to red-light districts and strip clubs is generally OK.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Activities that are illegal at the destination should be discussed in the travel guide article if the information is useful to the traveller, particularly when these activities are commonly legal in other places, or the penalties are unusually severe
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Information of interest to GLBT travellers is placed in the appropriate section of the article (e.g., gay bars go in Drink, gay-friendly hotels go in Sleep).
  • Related pages:
  • Note: Recommend this page be upgraded. It's currently a list of examples without any real definition of what a slippery slope is and why we need to be careful of them. It could be useful to have this clarified before the migration.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Attaching a date to facts can be useful to the traveller, but it must be balanced against maintaining a clear and concise travel guide. Prices are generally not dated, but cultural events may be. Operating hours (including seasonal closures) should be included in the guide.
  • Related pages: Time and date formats

Article status

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  • Note: Should we distinguish between status and quality?
  • Nutshell: Only nominate travel guides that appear to meet the criteria of a Star article. Star status will be given if consensus is reached within the community.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Travel guides that are very close to Star status should be identified and tagged as "Star potential".
  • Related pages: List of Star potential guides

Pages that are not travel guides

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  • Note: this page could be modified and used as the landing page for 4.0 Organization
  • Nutshell: The software used by the Wikimedia free travel guide lets us split up the site into multiple namespaces. With namespaces, each page is explicitly tagged to show what it's used for and where it fits in the site structure.
  • Related pages: Namespace index Note: Really only an index to the WT namespace.
  • Nutshell: The Main Page is the entryway for most casual readers into Wikitravel. It should show us in our best light. It includes a mix of gradually-changing information. Any logged-in user can edit it, but because of the complexity of the page layout, care should be taken in doing so.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Every article on Wikitravel has an associated talk page for discussing that article. Talk pages are not chat boards or comment areas; they're for coordinating editorial decisions, suggesting new material that should be considered, and generally collaborating on making a great article.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Wikimedia travel guide users that create their own user accounts get assigned their own user page. These pages are intended to provide a brief introduction about the user. Associated pages provide a personal sandbox to work on projects or ideas outside the "main" travel guide amd a communications medium for collaborating with other users.
  • Related pages: How to describe yourself
    How to create a user account
    Welcome, newcomers
    Babel
  • Nutshell: Special pages are pages that provide a range of information about the information the Wikimedia free travel guide contains. Through these pages you can quickly find most of the information in the guide, identify problems, locate users, see statistics and even find out what is missing!
  • Related pages:

Manual of style

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  • Nutshell:Our Manual of style is a collection of rules of thumb and guidelines for giving the Wikimedia free travel guide articles a consistent look and feel. Most of these rules have exceptions, but to put together a good reference work collaboratively, it's best to follow the rules unless they're quite inappropriate for a particular situation.
  • Note: Structure within an article is described here. Structure of the wiki is described in Organisation.

Structure of travel guide articles

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  • Avoid long lists (no link found)
  • Nutshell: Long lists or large groups of items can be difficult to understand. If there are more than 9 items to group, sub-divide into small groups of 7±2 items.
  • Note: this doesn't seem to have it's own policy page right now (which is surprising)... or maybe I'm missing it
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: An information box tells the reader something interesting about the destination or an attraction that is not included in the listing. They are good for providing supplemental information but should not be overused in an article.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Use standardized templates to provide consistent and complete information for business and attraction listings.
  • Related pages: Where you can stick it
    links to the various listing description pages
  • Note: To Manual of Style?
  • Nutshell: Routeboxes are included in the Get out section and provide a quick way of identifying nearby destinations. Routes should reflect the type(s) of travel commonly used in the local area.
  • Related pages: Route icons
    U.S. route icons
  • Note: Placeholder for Climate style guide.
  • Nutshell: Provide basic climate information about the destination. It helps to travel light by bringing only the things one needs, and to travel comfortably by bringing the right things.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: It's possible to encode information about the latitude and longitude of a destination into the destination guide itself.
  • Related pages:

Writing style

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  • Creating emphasis
  • Nutshell: Not every noun needs to be linked. Links should generally only be made to other travel content.
  • Related pages: -
  • Nutshell: this project may be printed or read on-screen. Write travel guides so they are equally useful in both formats.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: If something is very obvious or true for nearly all destinations, it does not need to be written.
  • Related pages:
  • Use of pronouns
  • Note: this is a combination of the existing 1st and 2nd person policies
  • Nutshell: It is OK to use "you" when addressing the reader, but avoid first person pronouns.
  • Alt: You can address the reader, but do not refer to yourself in an article.
  • Related pages: First person pronouns
    Second person pronouns
  • Nutshell: A list of words to avoid when describing a destination and its attractions and businesses.
  • Alt: Don't use weasel words, waffle, double-talk or puffery
  • Related pages:

Language

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  • Nutshell: Using abbreviations for commonly known titles is encouraged. Abbreviations should be consistent across articles.
  • Related pages: Spelling
  • Nutshell: It's often useful to point out the local-language name for a place or thing in an article. List the foreign-language word in parentheses after the English name.
  • Related pages: Naming conventions
    Romanization
    Spelling
  • Nutshell: Non-Latin alphabet names should be written in the latin alphabet for English to assist readers in pronounciation.
  • Note: Unclear
  • Alt: Romanization is the process of mapping a script into the Latin alphabet used for English. As a rule of thumb, romanization should allow the casual reader to guess at the pronunciation, and the expert to pronounce it right.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: Destination guides should be written in the local variant of English.
  • Related pages:
  • Nutshell: It is OK to refer to trademarks, but trademark symbols should not be used.
  • Related pages:

Numbers and Dates

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  • Nutshell: The cost of an item should be listed in the local currency unless the local convention is to list the price in a foreign currency. Prices should be listed with the currency symbol or abbreviation that travellers will encounter.
  • Related pages: -
  • Nutshell: Times should be displayed in the local timezone using the 12 or 24 hour format, whichever is the predominant local usage. Days of the week should be abbreviated to the minimum number of letters. Dates should use the format dd mmm yyyy.
  • Related pages: When to use dates
    Abbreviations
  • Nutshell: Metric or imperial units of measurement should be displayed depending on the predominant local usage. It is good practice to provide both metric and imperial conversions (local units first with conversion in parentheses).
  • Related pages: -
  • Nutshell: Format phone numbers as they would be dialled internationally but in a way that separates the country code, area code, and part that can be dialled locally.
  • Related pages: -

Other

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  • Note: Things are here because the proper section is not obvious. Please add suggestions for the appropriate section for any of these items.
  • HTML should be avoided in marking up articles. Use Wikimarkup for formatting when possible. If Wikimarkup is not possible, and the formatting will be generally useful, consider a Mediawiki template
  • Related pages: Help:Templates
  • Nutshell: A picture may be worth a thousand words, but when a trying to find your way around a new city, it's more like a million. A clear and simple map can save hours or even days of hassle.
  • Related pages: How to draw a map
    Common map symbols
  • Nutshell: How to change a policy or create a new one.
  • Note: New page explaining the process, or do we already have one?
  • Related pages: Consensus
    Bug reports
  • Community projects
  • Nutshell: An Expedition is a special sub-project for articles or images. (Sure, we could just call it a "project", but what fun is that?) Expeditions help us collaborate and organize around certain subjects, be they based on shared interests, geography, or shared skills.
  • Note: Move to section "Organisation"?
  • Related pages:
  • Offline version (?)
  • Note: We don't have one.
  • Nutshell: You as a traveller should be able to take your tour guide with you on the road. An internet cafe is not always just around the corner. But maybe you have a laptop or palm with the content of Wikivoyage on it. Our offline version is updated weekly.
  • Related pages: Wikivoyage:Offline version

Useful references

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