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Cotm

The Collaboration of the month is a way to get many contributors working on one article at once, often to get it ready for an upcoming event or a nomination for destination of the month. While anyone can edit any article at any time, this provides a way to highlight specific articles allowing many contributors to help improve them together.

Current Collaboration of the month

Edit/update articles about article templates

Task

• Improve stilted language and obsolete formatting throughout the suite of articles about article templates.

Nomination

We're currently working on language for a draft of a Wikivoyage:Rural area article template. However, when I made these edits, I was partly referencing Wikivoyage:Big city article template, which also had some terribly outdated listing formatting and very stilted language. I've already made these edits to the big city template article, but what this exercise has made clear to me is that there is likely to be stilted language and obsolete formatting throughout the suite of articles about article templates.

Would fixing this be a good task for a Cotm? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:25, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree. I’m thinking August might be a good month, as dead links (July’s COTM) are really important as mentioned in the pub. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:20, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Nominate

Think carefully before making a nomination. A successful collaboration of the month must be more than just an article you would like to see improved. In particular, it's a bad idea to nominate articles that lack enough content—most collaborators won't have intimate knowledge of the destination, although they can do style edits and fill in some of the blanks with very basic research.

Nominations most likely to be collaborative successes are those that have clearly defined areas for improvement, are of interest to a wide range of people, and that are already pretty well developed. Particularly good choices for nomination are articles that could quickly become options for the Destination of the Month, or Off the Beaten Path featured articles.

When nominating, describe exactly what you hope would come of a Collaboration. Explain why you think it would be a successful collaboration. (Not why you would like it improved!) Then leave a list of several bullet points detailing exactly how other contributors can help with the collaboration. The bullet points should be very concrete, and should detail basic tasks that anyone can help with. Collaborative tasks should be geared towards the goal of having a large number of contributors doing a small amount of work. Examples of good collaborative tasks include:

• Listingify all the listings (A task that anyone can do in small quantities spread out over the month.)
• Fill in basic details for listings (Anyone can spend five minutes on a given day to look up addresses and phone numbers for a small subsection of listings.)
• Add images (It is easy enough for an interested collaborator to look up one image on Wikimedia Commons (or find one with a suitable license on Flickr and transfer it to Commons) and add it to an article in about 10 minutes.)
• Copyediting (A lot of articles have issues with basic grammar, spelling, and style, particularly when written by non-native speakers. This is another good task easy to finish when spread out across a number of contributors, each contributing in small chunks.)

Take pains to avoid listing tasks that require either a significant committal of time or in-depth knowledge of the destination from individual contributors:

1. research beyond basic information (like contact information for a listing),
2. original writing,
3. map making (aside from more simple region maps),
4. devising new districts.

These are tasks for contributors with a special interest in a particular destination, not for contributors simply interested in devoting a small amount of time in support of the collaboration. If these types of tasks are to work, the nominator will have to volunteer to do them, or find someone beforehand who is willing.

Because a month is a long time, and we can get a lot of work done when many contributors are at work, consider whether the tasks for your nomination will take longer than just one week. Huge city articles can be ideal for nominations, as can regions that already have well developed city articles.

Use the following format for nominations:

===[[Chicken]]===

This article has a ton of great content, but is poorly formatted, is full of basic errors,
and most listings lack addresses. Chicken will be the host of the 20XX Winter Olympics, so 
it would be useful to get the article into good shape beforehand. There's a lot to be done, 
but the work is basic and can be divided easily over many contributors.

*'''Task 1''' — rationale
*'''Task 2''' — rationale
*'''Task 3''' — rationale
*'''Task 4''' — rationale

~~~~

Select

We decide which articles to select for the collaboration of the month through discussion. To weigh in, add your argument next to a bullet point below the nomination. It's also appropriate to suggest here when the article should be featured.

===[[Chicken]]===

This article has a ton of great content, but is poorly formatted, is full of basic errors, 
and most listings lack addresses. Chicken will be the host of the 20XX Winter Olympics, so 
it would be useful to get the article into good shape beforehand. There's a lot to be done, 
but the work is basic and can be divided easily over many contributors.  

*'''Task 1''' — rationale
*'''Task 2''' — rationale
*'''Task 3''' — rationale
*'''Task 4''' — rationale

TravelNut 25:25, 31 Feb 2525 (EDT)

* Tasks 2 and 4 are not well suited to collaboration, and the article doesn't have enough 
content yet for us to work on.  ~~~~

Note that objections must relate only to the nomination's potential for success as a collaboration of the month, not to one's own interest in the destination.

Scheduling

If a nomination has the support of the community, it can simply be added to the upcoming queue at a time deemed appropriate in the nomination discussion. Priority will be given to articles based on the strength of the nomination, urgency of the collaboration (with respect to upcoming large international events), and the goal of ensuring that we have a good balance of collaborations on articles from all parts of the world.

Archiving

After nominated entries have been featured as the collaboration of the month, move the original nomination and other comments to Project:Previous collaborations and add title to tabled list. Accomplished goals mark with {{Done}} or {{Partly done}}, failed goals with {{Not done}} or keep with {{to do}}.

Move unsuccessful nominations to the Project:Collaboration of the month/Slush pile.

Upcoming

Current proposals (subject to change).

Month	COTM
September 2020	Pages linking to disambiguation pages
October 2020	Articles Geo different to Wikidata - pass 2
November 2020	Articles with formerly dead external links - third round
December 2020	Pagebanner view on mobile
January 2021	Missing geo tag and coordinates
February 2021	Adding currency templates to pages
March 2021	Page banners usable articles — second round

Nominations

Population figures

2020 census figures: Many articles include 2010 census information in their "Understand" section. In a couple years, though, this information will be out of date and there will be new census figures. This could be something to work on. By the way, I just want to make sure this gets in the schedules, but I know it won't get on the list for many months yet. Selfie City (talk) 13:40, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

well obviously have a bit of time with this one, but has got me thinking. We could get latest population figures automatically from Wikdata. Could then have an in-text template or even a pull-down info above the pagebanner. I will make a few tests then could discuss options at the pub. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:20, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Official population figures may be meaningful in some places, but aren't in others... Be that due to arbitrary municipal boundaries, dodgy record keeping or other reasons... Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:44, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Hobbitschuster, if population statistics are on a page but are in question or inaccurate, we can always remove them altogether. Selfie City (talk) 05:12, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

if we globally fetch them automatically? I remember adding the 2010 census figures myself to a few US destinations whose articles were otherwise quite bare... Hobbitschuster (talk) 05:57, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

I am currently thinking of a smart template, can specify specific numbers and year or gets automatically from wikidata. At least that way we can keep a track on how up to date they are. Once I have worked something out we can discuss a task to replace, not just for USA census of 2010 (I assume that was the census being discussed, no Philippines or other country). --Traveler100 (talk) 06:35, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

An experiment at the moment, but take a look at {{populationof}}. --Traveler100 (talk) 09:41, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

We need to take into account that different countries hold a census in different years. See w:Population and housing censuses by country. It looks like the most popular year for the next census in 2021. As it often takes a couple of years to crunch the data, we should probably focus on articles with population figures more than 15 years old, but except for a few rapidly changing cities 1990s figures are probably good enough - a traveller just wants a feel for how big a place is, not to forecast how many children will be starting school in 3 years time. AlasdairW (talk) 20:51, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Also, I think some countries take a census every 5-6 years, more frequently than the US, which takes surveys every 10 years. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 20:53, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

It usually takes several years for census figures to be tabulated and published. I wouldn't expect to see the 2020 numbers anytime before 2023. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:59, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Have updated {{populationof}} so when using wikidata states the census used. Template can also accept manual input of numbers and text. Suggest using this for all population references, not just for automatic update but also to find articles where population figures are stated for future updates. Task should be to replace all population figure text with this template. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:43, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

(Moved discussion about the template to Template talk:Populationof.) —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:24, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Over a year later, discussion has stalled about how to fix the problems with the template over at Template talk:Populationof; we don't yet have consensus for implementing it widely. The U.S. 2020 census results will obviously not be ready for a while. Should this proposal be slushed for now? Or does anyone have an idea for another direction to take it? —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:27, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with slushing it or at least postponing it until the census results are available (which will be a few more years). Gizza ^(roam) 00:30, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

I have updated {{Populationof}}. If others are fine with the format then the task can be done at anytime. When wikidata is updated with the latest census information it will update the text automatically. --Traveler100 (talk) 10:57, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for adjusting the template. I would prefer showing two significant digits instead of three for populations greater than one million, but I don't feel strongly about that.

So, what is the proposal we need to consider now? Adding this template to the "Understand" section of all city articles? All city articles in the United States? Or what? —Granger (talk · contribs) 07:05, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

That seems like the obvious next step in this process. It seems like a COTM activity, as it's just copying a template into articles to replace information. However, we need support for that idea first, as any support mentioned above should not count for this idea. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:13, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

One just has to be careful. I suppose we often link to wikidata items with other definitions on the boundaries, so the "text" parameter should be used quite often ("the metropolitan area/the city itself has ..."). I think we agreed on digits except for values over a million, and two significant digits. I am not sure about the wikidata icon, which gives access to the source. Were there other concerns? --LPfi (talk) 16:36, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Missing geo tag and coordinates

Nomination

Map icon should be on all destination articles. Also would be a good idea to have them on itineraries, will help with creating itinerary region pages going forward, like United States of America itineraries. --Traveler100 (talk) 20:21, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support. Good idea for a task. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 10:21, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Tasks

• To do destinations articles without geo. currently 50
• To do Itineraries without geo. currently 285

Articles Geo different to Wikidata - pass 2

Correction of coordinates so Wikivoyage and Wikidata have same or similar values.

As of 26 December 2019, 204 articles in Category:Articles Geo different to Wikidata, showing distance of more than 100 km (62 mi) difference between Wikivoyage and Wikidata coordinates.

Tasks

• Done city articles. 0
• To do park articles. 1
• Done airport articles. 0
• Done district articles. 0
• To do country articles. 8
• Done continent articles. 1 (Antarctica does not make sense to change)
• To do topic articles. 8
• To do itineraries articles. 1
• Done dive guide articles. 0
• To do region articles. 191
  • To do outline regions. 162
  • To do usable regions. 17
  • Done guide regions. 0
  • Done star regions. 0
  • To do extra regions articles. 12

Methods and tips

• Click (RMB to open new tab) on Wikipedia link in side bar (if exists) and wikidata link to check if Wikivoyage article is connected to the correct pages.
  • If not connect to correct articles remove the Wikivoyage entry from Wikidata page and add to correct one.
• Compare current coordinate values on Wikivoyage and Wikidata, and possibly also Wikipedia.
  • If you have the ErrorHighlighter gadget preference enabled you will see at the bottom of articles the difference between the Wikivoyage and Wikidata values and can open up both in map pages.
• Identify which is correct, or work out a common new value.
  • Can use GeoMap to calculate new value, or right mouse button on a map page to get a coordinate, or manually try values in open map page by editing values in url line (often a good visual methods to get better coord and zoom values).
  • If still challenged to identify correct location try looking on Google Maps, Bing Maps or JRC Fuzzy Gazetteer.
  • If no listings have coordinates consider adding to one or two. This will also confirm the location of the article.
  • Also avoid coordinate of two Wikivoyage articles being too close to one another.
  • For destinations in China, read this first, as many websites (including Google Maps) use nonstandard coordinates for the country.
• Update values on Wikidata (coordinate location, P625 or coordinates of geographic center, P5140) and/or Wikivoyage ( in {{geo}} )
  • Consider rounding up coordinates, only really need two decimal places for cities, less for regions.
  • If update Wikivoyage geo coords, consider a better zoom value.
  • If update Wikidata may want to remove or edit reference value.

Nomination

Currently 204 articles in Category:Articles Geo different to Wikidata. The template is currently showing anything with a distance of more than 100 km (62 mi) difference between Wikivoyage and Wikidata coordinates. Would like to get this down so nothing over 10 km (6.2 mi) difference.--Traveler100 (talk) 13:05, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

• Also those distances can be normal for regions and parks. I have seen warnings for some, where Wikidata gives the administrative centre while we give the geographical, or something similar. There is no need to have the same coordinates in these cases. We could of course add a second pair of coordinates to the Wikidata item, I am not sure how that is best done (and don't know whether the template knows how to handle double coords – aha! there is already at least two properties in Wikidata). --LPfi (talk) 16:48, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Articles with formerly dead external links - third round

Task

As of 26 December 2019 there were 652 articles marked with formerly dead external links.

To correct articles appearing in this category, enable the "ErrorHighlighter" gadget from your user preferences. After enabling the gadget, invalid links will display followed by a very noticeable "formerly dead link" warning. Verify whether the link is still valid and perform the appropriate fix:

1. If the link goes to spam or to a site that is otherwise incorrect then the link should either be replaced with a correct link or else removed from the article. In either case the {{dead link}} tag should also be removed.
2. If cannot find any recent reviews of the listing (say last two years) or other sites stated closed, then delete the listing.
3. If the link is valid then remove the {{dead link}} tag and use the "edit summary" field to note that the link is both valid and no longer dead.

Nomination

We got this down to 1 article, but now the check bot has been rerun. As of 26 December 2019 there are 652 Articles with formerly dead external links. Some of these will be good links but many are IP address squatters and will lead readers to unrelated commercial pages or sites with virus risks. This list needs clearing out and the web links fixed or deletion of the listings. --Traveler100 (talk) 17:56, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

• Support. This is definitely a problem that needs to be kept under control constantly. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:02, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:33, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Pages linking to disambiguation pages

Task

As of 25 December 2019 there were 1993 Special:DisambiguationPageLinks.

1. Ignore lines where name linking to → name (disambiguation). Redirects of place name to same place name with (disambiguation), or link from main place with name to others with same name.
2. On page with link edit to a specific link

e.g. change [[Limburg]] to [[Limburg (Netherlands)|Limburg]]

Nomination

Although not all of the nearly 2000 links are invalid there are a good number of articles linking to a location which is not precisely defined. --Traveler100 (talk) 10:06, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Good idea. Is there a way to filter out cases where XYZ links to XYZ (disambiguation)? I notice many of the articles in the list have links like this, and they usually don't need to be changed. —Granger (talk · contribs) 11:34, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

I cannot see a way with Search or PetScan syntax. They will be all redirect pages. Could export out to Excel then filter but that would be out of date very quickly. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:32, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, they're not all redirects. For instance, Aberdeen links to Aberdeen (disambiguation). —Granger (talk · contribs) 12:38, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Ah good point, that is also valid, having a disambig= in the page banner pointing to other places with the same name. --Traveler100 (talk) 17:28, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Adding currency templates to pages

Nomination

There are a number of pages that mention currency values. We could use currency templates to show the values in other currencies. WOSlinker (talk) 18:37, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

• Support. I had to look at a previous nomination example to see where I should vote here! However, yes, I support this nomination. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:00, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Tasks

• To do articles mentioning euro. currently 128
• To do articles mentioning €. currently 2503
• To do articles mentioning $. currently 7078
• To do articles mentioning £. currently 1104

Page banners to usable articles — second round

Nomination

Continue with this past collaboration, see Wikivoyage:Previous collaborations#Custom banners - usable articles. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:33, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Pagebanner view on mobile

On mobile devices some pagebanners do not show correctly due to the fact that mobile devices do not show the full width of the picture. The part that is shown can be adjusted using the "origin" parameter of the pagebanner templates (for example, see Voyages of Zheng He). This was suggested at Talk:Voyages of Zheng He and I agree with Mx. Granger that it's a good collaboration of the month idea. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:38, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Support. I think it's a good way to improve the appearance of the site on mobile. We might want to start with star articles, country articles, guide cities, or some other manageable chunk. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:03, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

True. Guide city articles might be a good start? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:03, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Eating and shopping at airports

Too many of our airport articles have bottom halves that are nearly empty. What is a passenger with 20 minutes or 20 hours between flights supposed to do about food, or shopping, or entertaining themselves? We're not much of a travel guide if we can't (or don't) tell them.

I'm put a lot of effort into Atlanta's airport, and although it's not complete yet, I think this is a good model for how much info other airport articles can and should have. The Wait, Eat/Drink, Buy, Cope, and Sleep sections are all very full.

The hardest part with airports is doing the research. You can't just go into the airport to look around if you're not flying somewhere, and airports are notorious for having incomplete, inaccurate, or simply a lack of information about their shops. They often don't have their own websites; even if they're part of a chain or a sister restaurant, it's usually not mentioned as one of their locations, and there may be no info on how the airport location's menu and prices differ from normal. If you can find reviews at all, they're usually difficult to gauge because there usually aren't as many and weary travellers like to complain, although restaurants at airports also tend to have worse food and service than ones elsewhere.

That said, the internet can still be a lot of help. Just search "best restaurants [airport]" for any large airport and you can find a bunch of articles by Eater, Thrillist, Michelin, Zagat, and local news media that give curated lists of the best the airport has to offer. Coffee (worth calling out at any airport, in my opinion) and bars are a little harder to find, but are often mentioned along with restaurants.

(Along the way, you may find articles that list the best X in airports around the world. That's still useful, you just have to swing by all of the relevant airport articles rather than focusing only on one at a time.)

Airport websites are hit-or-miss. Some have fairly good listings of every shop in the whole airport, including hours (which are hopefully accurate), contact info, and locations. Some are more barebones, and aren't that helpful for what we need. Besides listings, the other good thing the airport's website can offer is a map, which is often the only way to figure out exactly where each shop is. Again, these are hit-or-miss. The same applies for OpenStreetMap (sometimes when shops are tagged, their locations are just someone's rough guess and may be off by several gates, or just plain outdated or wrong) and Google Maps (which has good internal maps of some airports, although you can't use this for geotagging on WV).

Tasks

Every airport article is a candidate. Obviously not every airport will have as much to say as Atlanta, but just going down the w:List of busiest airports by passenger traffic, here's how our articles on the top 12 airports stack up:

• Done Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Guide) - The listings are fairly comprehensive if I do say so myself ;-) although the Buy section could use some more. Only about half of the listings have a description.
• To do Beijing Capital International Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Outline) - Considering Wait says there are "many options for eating, drinking and shopping", it's a shame we only call out 2 KFCs and a Starbucks.
• To do Los Angeles International Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Usable) - Some terminals have a bunch of listings, but about half have few or even none.
• To do Dubai International Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Outline) - No description of where all these lounges are. Lots of restaurants listed, but not formatted and absolutely no details or descriptions. If there are "plenty of coffee shops" as it says, why don't we list a single one to tell people where to find some?
• To do Tokyo Haneda Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Outline) - There's a "good selection of restaurants" but we don't name a single one. And for some reason, we mention "fashion brand shops" in the Eat section instead of Buy.
• To do O'Hare International Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Usable) - These sections are in decent shape and would bring it close to Guide status, but the Eat section needs an overhaul because we list a lot of WV:Boring chains and omit a lot of unique standouts. It also seems too short for an airport with "plenty of places to eat".
• To do Heathrow Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Usable or Guide) - This is mostly in good shape, but the lounges could use locations, and the listings in the Eat section probably need reviewing by someone familiar with Heathrow and with British restaurants (I suspect a lot of these are boring chains again).
• To do Shanghai Pudong International Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Outline) - Oh dear. We do warn readers that there aren't many good options, but the only ones we list by name are Subway, Burger King, and Starbucks.
• To do Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Guide) - Wow, this one is actually in decent shape. However, not all terminals are covered equally, and listings have little or no description. And do we really need to list 41 duty free shops all with the same name and little description of how they're different?
• To do Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Guide) - Again, pretty good shape. I'd prefer to rearrange the restaurants by location, which might make it clearer whether there are any major gaps (which there probably are, given how short the Eat section is).
• To do Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Outline) - After a run of two decent articles, we're back to barebones. Not a single listing in the entire bottom half of the article among some small amounts of prose, and the only place called out by name is Starbucks.
• To do Schiphol Airport (Status of article's bottom half: Outline) - Once again, there are "plenty of cafes and restaurants" but we only mention Burger King and McDonald's. There's free Wi-Fi, but instead of telling readers the network to connect to, we link them to a page that no longer exists.

Updating the Collaboration of the month

At the beginning of each month, the Collaboration of the month needs to be updated. Any registered user can do so. To update the current Collaboration of the month you should:

1. Remove the current collaboration from this page and move the next one up.
2. Move the current collaboration to the Previous collaborations page.
3. Remove the Cotm template from the current Collaboration of the month pages and add the pcotm template (for example, {{pcotm|Shanghai}} if the COTM is Shanghai) to their talk pages.
4. Add the Cotm template to the next collaboration article.
5. Update the Template:Current collaboration with the new COTM.
6. Update the Template:Cotmpromote page with the new COTM.
7. Clear the cache for the Project:Project page by clicking here.
8. Clear the cache for the Main Page by clicking here.
9. Schedule some new collaborations. There should be about 4 months worth upcoming in the queue.
10. Post about the new cotm in the Pub.