Slashdot Mirror
Wikimedia Foundation Launches Wikivoyage
jones_supa writes "The Wikimedia Foundation has marked its 12th anniversary by launching a Creative-Commons-licensed travel guide called Wikivoyage. Like other Wikimedia projects, Wikivoyage contains material written collaboratively by volunteers. The site has launched under the aegis of Wikimedia with around 50,000 articles and approximately 200 volunteer editors. Wikivoyage started in 2006 as a travel guide in German and Italian, backed by the German non-profit Wikivoyage Association. The transition to a Wikimedia project was initiated by contributors and the Association, and content is currently offered in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. The purpose of the Wikivoyage is to promote education and knowledge of all countries and regions in the world, as well as understanding among nations. There's a huge global demand for travel information, but very few sources are both comprehensive and non-commercial. That's about to change."
Mostly harmless.
Wikitravel has been very reliable in my experience. Another option is always appreciated.
Wikivoyage is largely a fork of Wikitravel, which has been around for years, but is under the control of a private business.
Your tourist site with ancient historical monuments is non-notable and the article has been deleted.
See our top article:Twilight Land
My little Linux and tech blog
What's the point of this again? I use Wikitravel all the time (I even used it to find new places to eat in my home area), but this doesn't seem to offer anything WT doesn't already have.
Wikipedia employs abusive paranoid admins who obviously don't take their medications. Just look at the Wikimedia global account log to see some of the loony behavior from admins who stay up for 12 hours straight. Wikimedia should be held with the same scrutiny as gun and video game manufacturers before we have another Aaron Schwartz or Sandy Hook on our hands. See also the Gibraltarpedia scandal which violates their own conflict of interest guidelines and is ran by the banned user Gibraltarian.
"Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia project"
http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:List_of_related_projects#Wikipedia
http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:Cooperating_with_Wikipedia
Wikipedia and Wikitravel have distinct goals, and forking large amounts of content from one project to the other creates wasteful duplication, and can actually stifle the development of creative, original content. In most cases, linking from one to the other would be a better choice.
As a rule, any significant copy-pasting of Wikipedia text to Wikitravel is not permitted, while borrowing the odd single turn of phrase when your writers' brain is stalling is allowed.
Now that they've been forked, Wikitravel might as well close up shop.
All the eyeballs that ended up on their website will be landing on wikipedia instead.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's their resources, so it's theirs to decide WTF they want to do with it. But here's a thought. What the Web sorely lacks isn't another Wiki dump of specialized topics that can be found in other Wikipages, something a web robot can do. The Wikimedia foundation is in a good position, more than any other non-commercial group, to start its own search engine to rival the corporate offerings of Google and Microsoft. Besides Google, Bing and specialist search sites for products, pr0n, and pirate wares, the other search "engines" are mostly Google/Bing scrapers. Wikimedia has the chance to change that, with its already extensive catalog of human verified links, aka citations required.
As people before have noted Wikivoyage is a fork of the Wikitravel, and I thing this is a great thing for Internet freedom and collaborative work. For all the critcism Wikipedia has had, there is the goal to make knowledge free. Whilst Internet Brands abused the old wikitravel website, hopefully we can get a reformed great collaborative travel guide, and something to balance Tripadvisor
They have a mobile version of the web site. But I sincerely hope they make it possible to download offline packages for different areas. Pair it up with OpenStreetMap data , and you'd have a great app.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
1. Somewhat cheaper.
2. Has the words "DON'T PANIC" in large friendly letters on the cover.
What matters most to me when traveling is avoiding the negative experiences. The internet is increasingly censorship-oriented, and quickly deletes posts that are critical of a place. I've been on other travel forums where the moderators will quickly delete my account if I say that e.g. most Mexican food in Austin, TX is bland and overspiced with raw jalapenos. I've had much better Mexican food elsewhere.
Another project Wikipedia can export its dysfunctional culture to... though to be fair, it seems German wikipedia is a lot less dysfunctional than the English.
It's time someone did to wikis what distributed revision control did to software projects. Easy to fork, easy to maintain specialized trees without duplicating effort.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I can't wait to visit the spot in North America where George Washington manipulated our nation's Great Stick and made a speech concerning public health.
Visiting history, one edit at a time!
Scarce, scared, scarred, sacred... -Col. Bruce Hampton
Offline Wikivoyage app now available on Google Play Store.