Template talk:Wikitravel

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Template:Wikitravel is permanently protected from editing, as it is a heavily used or visible template.

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Contents

[edit] Usage

  1. {{wikitravel}} - where the PAGENAME matches Wikitravel's page
  2. {{wikitravel|Atlanta}} - set the parameter to match Wikitravel's page name.

[edit] See also

[edit] Parameterized variant?

Is there a variant of this template that lets the user specify a name? For example:

{{Wikitravel|Chicago, Illinois}}

There are occasions when the wikitravel pagename is not the same as wikipedia's, and also this would let the wikipedia article change its name without affecting the link. -Wikibob | Talk 01:01, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Exactly, like in the case of Seattle. What if we take the same templete of Template:Commons? In its page it looks broken, but it works perfectly for chaging the target. Nova77 15:18, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The idiomatic method is to create a new template along the lines of Template:wikisourcepar, Template:wiktionarypar, Template:wikiquotepar, which in this case would be Template:wikitravelpar. However, given that Wikitravel isn't actually a Wikipedia sister project, I'm opposed to the whole idea. What's next — Template:Amazon and Template:eBay? --Quuxplusone 21:27, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Done. I create Template:wikitravelpar. Quuxplusone, if you don't like it then TFD it and we'll see what everyone thinks. :) Cburnett 05:53, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
Template:Wikitravel has already been TFD's once (in Oct 2004, although it seems to be missing from the logs?) and survived — under the condition that it doesn't attempt to emulate a Wikimedia project. I don't think a blue color is enough for this. Jpatokal 08:32, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I agree. I have noticed its being reverted to the IMDb-style template several times now (not by me); who keeps putting it back to the sister-alike version? --Quuxplusone 16:28, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Template:Wikitravelbyname has existed since October of last year, and is fairly widely used. Why do we need another template to do the same thing?. -- Chris j wood 11:25, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I didn't know it existed. (Document these things before they're asked for! :) But it is standard Wikipedia style to use 'par' (parameter) for this kind of template; viz. Template:Wiktionarypar, Template:Wikiquotepar, Template:Wikisourcepar. So I strongly suggest moving that template. It will make it much easier for newbies to find without having to visit WikiProject Wikitravel or wherever the documentation for this project is hiding. --Quuxplusone 16:28, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia project

Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia Foundation project. The boxed logo style external links should be restricted to "in the family" projects only. If this template appears on a page with a commons box, for example, it makes it appear to be to a project with the same standing as Commons, which is misleading. Gentgeen 16:47, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Right. I see it's been rv'ed to the correct version again. But it really shouldn't have the * in front of it, if it's supposed to match the other external-link templates listed at Wikipedia:Template messages/Links. It will be a major undertaking to remove the asterisk from the template and add it in all the articles; I'll start this afternoon (if there's no convincing objection), but some help would be appreciated. --Quuxplusone 17:28, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
If you go to the "what links here" [1], I've done through Zurich. I got you half way there. :) Cburnett 20:35, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid I strongly disagree with you, Gentgeen. First off I'd like to point out the fact that template:wikicities has been allowed to keep it's box design and Wikitravel isn't 'part of the family'. To be honest as long as this template has it's blue backround and a link to what Wikitravel is, people should be quite capable to figure out that it's not part of Wikimedia. And to be honest, all Wikis were created rather equal. Especially when for the most part they're all running off nearly indentical software.--Aaron Einstein 01:37, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)
Template:Wikicities has now been reverted to the last, non-boxed version, and a note left on the talk page. Thanks for noticing. --Quuxplusone 06:44, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Amended to use wikitravelpar

I've amended the implementation of this template to use Template:wikitravelpar whilst preserving the usage. This way, the next time somebody decides to change the formatting, we only have one place to change and less possibility of inconsistencies between the versions. -- Chris j wood 11:16, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've undone this and instead redirected Wikitravelpar here, because using default parameters, we can now merge the functions into this one template, which has the more natural name (without the "par"). See the #Usage above. -- Netoholic @ 17:57, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Destinations prefixed by 'the'

A handful of destinations such as the Central African Republic and the Czech Republic are identified with the definate article 'the'. The current template does not reflect that, so these destinations get expanded as below:

The resulting text should include the word 'the'. Is there a way to rectify this? --Bletch 16:46, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Two options I see:
  • Travel guide: "Central African Republic" from Wikitravel
  • Central African Republic - a travel guide from Wikitravel
I'm also fine with the "grin and bear it" approach. -- Netoholic @ 17:57, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
I favor the latter approach. --Bletch 19:13, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why place name in italics?

I would prefer the place name not to be in italics. Italics is traditionally used for emphasis, for words from other languages and for book and film titles, but not for place names. I wrote a book about New York City. This looks strange. AxelBoldt 18:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Linking Wikitravel

Netoholic, would you care telling why do you think linking to our article about Wikitravel is a bad thing ? This is done with dozens of other External Link templates. bogdan 17:46, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

It is also not done with dozens of other templates. Linking to our article in this template will clutter up Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikitravel, which makes Wikipedia less useful for people researching Wikitravel (the website) as they have to sift through eventually thousands of links from place names, rather than finding information on the website. Perhaps we should start extending this to other templates as a standard? -- Netoholic @ 18:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me that "Wikitravel" should best point to wikitravel:Main Page, rather than wikitravel:Wikitravel:About. --ESP 03:24, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Travel guide to X -> X travel guide

I find the "Travel guide to X" format a little stilted. Barring objections, I'm going to switch this to "X travel guide". --ESP 18:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need more generality

I have a case where neither Wikitravel nor Wikitravelpar seem to fit. I just used this template in the External Links section of the Cebu web page as { { wikitravel|Cebu (island) } }. This produces what I think is a very ugly looking link something like the following:

Cebu (island) travel guide from Wikitravel

I would prefer to be able to separately specify the text to be shown in the link and the actual wikitravel page name. I am not (yet) writing templates myself, but I suspect that this could be done similarly to the way the citation templates are parameterized. -- Boracay Bill 06:22, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Playing around a bit, I came up with the following:
[[wikitravel:{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}} |
{{#if:{{{2}}}|{{{2}}}|{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}
travel guide]] from [[Wikitravel]]
  • With zero or one parameter, it works like the current wikitravel template.
  • With two parameters, it links in Wikitravel to the first and labels the link with the second.
  • Supplying null or blank parameters produces unintended results. -- Boracay Bill 03:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Potential problem, and a proposal

I had thought to suggest replacing the current wikitravel template with the backwards-compatible template discussed in the preceeding section. On reflection, however, I think that there is a potential problem with the current template which that would not correct.

The potential problem which I see is that the current wikitravel template produces a fragile link if used with zero parameters. The link will be broken if either the wikitravel page or the wikipedia page is renamed. I am a bit sensitive about page naming as I have recently observed that page naming for cities and provinces in the Philippines does not follow consistent naming conventions, and the page names used are sometimes confusing. That is a side-issue, but it could lead to page renaming which would break wikitravel template links on the renamed pages.

Also, AFAICT, Section 4 above - "Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia project" - is still an outstanding unaddressed problem. I have addressed that below.

I see the following as a solution to this problem:

  1. Create a replacement (proposed code provided below) for the wikitravel template which treats use with zero parameters as an error condition. Name it (e.g.) wikitravelpage.
  2. Deprecate the wikitravel template.
  3. Convert existing uses of the wikitravel template to use the replacement wikitravelpage template instead. This could be done with a bot.
  4. Remove the deprecated wikitravel template. If a bot was used to do the template usage conversion, discontinue its use subsequent to removal of the wikitravel template.

Following is proposed code for the replacement wikitravelpage template. This produces a non-boxed tag which can optionally be labeled with something other than the tag name. It treats use with zero parameters as an error condition, similar to what the cite web template does if invoked with zero parameters.

{{#if: {{{1|}}}|
[http://wikitravel.org/en/{{{1}}} {{#if:{{{2|}}}|{{{2}}}|{{{1}}}}} travel guide]
from [[Wikitravel]]|
'''Error on call to [[Template:wikitravelpage]]: Parameter 1 must be specified'''
}}<noinclude><niwiki>
*Usage:
:1. {{wikitravelpage Boracay}} - link to wikitravel's page on Boracay
:2. {{wikitravelpage Boracay|Boracay Island}} - ditto, but label it Boracay Island
</nowiki>

Comments? -- Boracay Bill 05:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

FYI, the conventional solution as I understand it would be to keep the current Template:wikitravel as it is, and create a new Template:wikitravelpar along the lines of what you have above. (The "par" stands for "parameter".) Also, either you're missing a couple of pipe characters in your sample usages, or your template is really funky-weird and ought to be changed to work like normal templates: {{wikitravelpar|Boracay|Boracay Island}}. Hope this helps! --Quuxplusone 03:50, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments.

I had seen the wikitravelpar template, which was used in section 5 above and which currently redirects to to wikitravel. I proposed the complicated migration procedure described above because my proposed replacement template would deliberately not have been backwards compatible with the current wikitravel template; I removed support for invocation with zero parameters because I felt that links thus produced are excessively fragile. I thought that I had explained that sufficiently, but perhaps not.

Perhaps that was too big a step. Let me propose an alternative wikitravel replacement which is backwards compatible with the current wikitravel template with the difference that this new one (1) produces non-boxed links and (2) adds support for an optional second parameter.

[http://wikitravel.org/en/{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}} {{#if:{{{2}}}|{{{2}}}|{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}} travel guide]
from [[Wikitravel]]
  • Usage:
0 arg: {{wikitravel}} - link to wikitravel page matching this page name
1 arg: {{wikitravel|Boracay}} - link to wikitravel's page on Boracay
2 arg: {{wikitravel|Boracay|Boracay Island}} - ditto, but label it Boracay Island


Would it be appropriate for me to break the wikitravelpar redirection and place my proposed replacement template there, with an announcement that barring objection I intend to move the replacement code to the wikitravel template in X number of days? (The actual proposed replacement code differs slightly from the above, and can be seen at User:Wtmitchell/Draft1. My test cases can be seen at User:Wtmitchell/Draft2.)

Regarding your comment that my template code is really funky-weird and ought to be changed to work like normal templates, I am new to template coding and looked mainly at Help:Template, at ParserFunctions, and at Template:cite_web for an example of handling of error-case invocation without a required parameter. Can you point me at a Help page describing what "normal templates" ought to look like? -- Boracay Bill 08:47, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:wikitravelpar replaced with proposed new code

Having seen neither objection nor guidance to the contrary, I have replaced the Template:wikitravelpar redirection to Template:wikitravel with my proposed new wikitravel template, as was discussed above. If I see no objection over the next week or so, I plan to replace the wikitreavel template and restore the reidrect.

Note that this affects a number of currently-active pages which use the wikitravelpar template (e.g., Nagoya. -- Boracay Bill 02:08, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:wikitravel replaced with new code

Having seen neither objection nor guidance to the contrary, I am replacing Template:wikitravel with my new code discussed above and restoring the the Template:wikitravelpar redirection to Template:wikitravel. -- Boracay Bill 23:58, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Are we inappropriately and "semi-officially" endorsing WikiTravel with this template?

First, I know this topic has been raised many months ago, but I will raise it again:

WikiTravel is not a sister project of Wikipedia. It's not owned or run by the Wikimedia Foundation. It uses Media-Wiki software and looks like Wikipedia or Wiktionary, but it's owned by Internet Brands, a for-profit company with no relationship to the Foundation.

See Wikipedia's WikiTravel article for more details.

I like and use WikiTravel, but I'm concerned that this template will feed accusations of favoritism to certain other wikis. That just makes spam cleanup more challenging:

  • "You've got a Wikitravel link -- why are you deleting mine?"

If the community consensus supports a unique preference for Wikitravel, then I think we should explicitly adress this uniqueness in policies and guidelines. That way, we can just anwer the query above with:

  • "Yeah, the entire community agreed Wikitravel was a good link. They didn't do that with yours."

See this recent, aggravating discussion for an example of a somewhat similar problem we had with a spammer:

I'm happy either way -- I just think this should be explicitly discussed and then explicitly published. --A. B. (talk) 17:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The template expands to:
Placename travel guide from Wikitravel
I cannot see that anybody could read that text as an endorsement. And a template is just a shortcut to producing the text, so I don't think anybody could read the presence of a template as being an endorsement (indeed a reader, as opposed to an editor, would not even know there was a template there).
So I guess this question really comes down to the question as to whether any link to Wikitravel is an endorsement. Actually this page is probably not the right place to discuss that, but as we are here I will. I think my answer is pretty clearly no. We link to the web sites of many organisations without anybody thinking that we are endorsing them; and I don't see that the fact that Wikitravel is a Wiki makes any difference there.
I do know that links normally to be avoided suggests avoiding links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors, but by any reasonable criteria Wikitravel does have a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors.
On the other hand, I don't think we should treat a link to Wikitravel any differently to any other link when assessing whether to keep it; there is no reason to give Wikitravel preference over any other reasonably non-commercial travel site other than the quality of the information at the other end of the link. Each link should be judged on the merits of the target article over other sites giving similar information. So the response should not be 'Wikitravel is preferred to your preferred travel site', but rather 'Wikitravel's article on this place is better than your preferred site's article'.
My views, anyway. -- Chris j wood 18:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I think that Wikitravel fits into the "What should be linked" category #3: "contain neutral and accurate material that cannot be integrated... due to... amount of detail". This fits in with the current routine links to IMDB or Memory Alpha which also serve the same purpose on a routine basis and thereby justify having templates for them.
In the meantime, my biggest concern with the use of the Wikitravel template is that I fear it's being used a bit indiscriminately. For example, the Djibouti article links to the Wikitravel article article which is not very useful. It might be nice to require that in order to be linked, the Wikitravel article should have a Status Rating at Wikitravel of either "usable" or better or perhaps "guide" or better. Then at least we would have some confidence that we are passing the "amount of detail" test. -- Cjensen 21:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, for what it's worth, Wikitravel articles link back to Wikipedia equally indiscriminately... while I agree that linking to hopeless stubby Wikitravel articles is not very useful, I don't think this is big enough a problem to require some notional guideline which would be difficult to enforce anyway, esp. as status ratings on Wikitravel are quite fluid.
As for the main question, my answer is obviously "no". The current template is just a timesaver and the links are on a fully equal footing with any other external link. Jpatokal 07:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please add iw:ca

Please add ca:Plantilla:Wikitravel, thank's a lot.--Aljullu 13:10, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. --ESP 13:51, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "from" or "at"

I think it is more common for External link templates to have the "at this website" instead of "from this website". Maybe the text can be changed into "City travel guide at Wikitravel". – Ilse@ 10:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template comments

I moved the following comments from the page proper. --ESP 13:50, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I had hoped to use the version below instead, which should produce non-boxed links. This worked OK when tested elsewhere, but it did not function as expected when moved into Template:Wikitravel and invoked with zero parameters. For now, I am leaving it here as a comment; perhaps a better template coder than I can fix it. -- Boracay Bill 00:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

{{{2}}} travel guide from Wikitravel

[edit] Protected edit request

Please add Category:Interwiki link templates

Thanks, Elonka 20:25, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Done! NCurse work 07:51, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Please add interwiki sl:Predloga:Wikitravel, thanks. --AndrejJ (talk) 07:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)